


Doppelgänger

by CrzyFun



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Halfa Trio AU, Mental Link, Mistaken Identity, Multi, Non-binary character, Pansexual Character, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sibling Bonding, Trans Danny Fenton, Trans Male Character, and by that i mean no one can agree on who's the ghost kid, sam as a halfa, the trio's op, tucker as a halfa, tucker sam and danny in a qpr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:30:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25410142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrzyFun/pseuds/CrzyFun
Summary: Danny, Sam, and Tucker were just 14 when they took a look inside the portal Danny's parents had built.From there, everything changed. They woke up with white hair, green skin, and powers they could learn to control.They were hybrids, halfas.They were the hero Doppelgänger.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton, Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Danny Fenton/Valerie Gray, Tucker Foley/Original Character(s)
Comments: 202
Kudos: 347





	1. Episodes 0-1

**{Accident}**

They groaned as they sat up. Their bodies ached and their skins buzzed with power.

“We’re alive,” they said breathlessly, only to realize they weren’t breathing.

They looked up and their eyes met. They flinched back in shock.

Their hair was stark white, contrasting with the dark forest green of their skin. The sides were shaved close like Tucker’s hair, but the top fell to their chins like Sam’s. It was also feathery and hung in their faces, like Danny’s. They had Danny’s round face, but Tucker’s plump nose and Sam’s full lips. Their eyes were hidden behind goggles whose lenses were glowing toxic green. They all wore the same suit: black hazmat with white boots, gloves, and collars. Glittering white stars littered the black while electric blue circuit patterns glowed on the white. Sharp fangs peeked out from their open mouths and their ears were pointed. Black vines weaved in and out of the cartilage and small violet roses nestled against their lobes. They had Danny’s small thin body paired with Tucker’s wider shoulders and Sam’s wider hips.

“What the hell?” they exclaimed, reaching for each other. “What happened to us?”

They remembered each putting on one of Danny’s suits and goggles, Tucker taking the prescription ones Mrs. Fenton had made for him. They had gone into the nonfunctioning portal to check it out: Danny curious about the world his parents had spent his life obsessing over, Tucker fascinated by the technology surrounding him, and Sam in it for the thrill. Sam had tried to rush ahead and Danny had stumbled over a wire when he grabbed her to keep her close. This had caused him to bump into Tucker, who had grabbed his shoulder with one hand and the wall with the other to keep upright.

Then there had been a click and the whirring of engines coming to life.

After that, there was only pain.

“The portal turned on,” they said, shivering, “with us inside. We… Did we die? Are we ghosts?”

A door opened upstairs and they all turned to look. Danny jumped to his feet, hands burying in his hair.

“Our parents!” they said. “If they find us down here…”

Sam turned to the portal to see a swirl of green mists that resembled their goggles.

Tucker shook his head.

“We’re not going in there again. It’s where ghosts belong, right? We can’t be ghosts, our parents would kill us,” they said frantically.

“Kids?”

Sam and Tucker jumped to their feet as well, grabbing Danny’s hands. Sam tried to tug them towards the portal. Tucker tried to pull them towards the door to the sub-basement. Danny stared at the stairs to the lab.

“We have to go! We’d rather go to the Fenton Dungeon! We can’t be ghosts!”

Something snapped and rings of white-blue-purple rolled over them.

They collapsed with a -- with _three_ \-- shouts.

“Kids!”

Danny’s parents came rushing in as the three slowly pulled themselves off the ground, bodies aching and sluggish.

“Are you alright? What happened?” Mrs. Fenton asked, going immediately to her son’s side as Mr. Fenton hovered nearby, looking all three kids over.

The trio shared a look and were both shocked and relieved to see they were back to normal.

They were alive.

“We-I-I mean, I’m fine, Mom,” Danny said hesitantly, voice cracking slightly when he realized his voice was the only one answering.

“M-Me too,” Tucker said, his own voice wavering for the same reason.

Sam just nodded.

“What happened?” Mrs. Fenton repeated.

The three shared a look.

_We need to lie,_ Sam thought and the boys flinched as they realized they could hear her. Her eyes widened, but carried on. _We should say Danny was showing us the portal and it just came on. Don’t say we were near it._

_Why should we lie?_ Danny asked.

_Uh, because then they’ll think somethings wrong._

_Something is wrong,_ Tucker pointed out.

_JUST DO IT! Hurry before they get suspicious!_

“I was, uh, showing Sam and Tuck the portal and it just came on,” Danny said quickly.

His dad looked over at the portal with excitement, but quickly stomped it down and focused on the kids. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“We’re fine,” they said, then flinched.

“None of you got shocked or hit with anything right?” Mrs. Fenton asked.

“Nope,” they lied.

“Alright, but I want to check you all over, just in case. Suits off.”

They quickly slipped out of the primarily white suits and handed them off to Danny’s dad while his mom checked them over for injuries. She measured their breathing and heart rate before giving their faces a long look to be sure there wasn’t any ectoplasmic spillage. She scanned them for ectoplasmic radiation and frowned at the results, but admitted they weren’t worrying.

“See, we’re fine, Mom,” Danny said, even as Tucker had to bite his lip to keep from speaking with him.

“Okay, you three head upstairs. Jazz should be home in an hour with dinner.”

The trio fled to Danny’s room.

Danny flopped face-first onto his bed. Tucker leaned against his desk, looking over his phone to be sure it was still working fine. Sam placed herself in front of the mirror, staring.

Ten minutes went by in silence.

_So did we die or not?_ Tucker asked and his friends squirmed.

_I’m pretty sure we can’t be dead with a pulse,_ Danny said, his hand coming up to his neck to feel the beating against his fingers.

_But living people can’t talk in their heads with other people… Wait, you guys_ can _hear this, right? I’m not going crazy?_

“It’s called Telepathy,” Sam snorted, leaning closer to the mirror. “It’s not exactly connected to dead people.”

“It’s a pretty common superpower,” Danny said, his voice muffled by his pillow as he gestured towards his bookcase.

“I know that, but normal people -”

Tucker cut off as a purple ring of light expanded from Sam’s waist, widening until it was around the size of a hula hoop. It split in two with one going up and the other going down. Where they passed, she was transformed into the form they’d woken in.

Tucker jerked upright with a gasp. “Holy crow!”

Danny rolled over and stared at her with wide eyes. “Sam?”

She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment then turned to them. “Yeah, i-”

She cut off, her hands going to her mouth.

“Your voice,” Tucker said.

“It sounds like,” Danny continued.

“Us,” Sam finished, her voice an echoing mixture of her, Tucker, and Danny talking over one another. “This is so…”

“Cool,” Tucker said while Danny said, “freaky.”

Sam’s lips twitched up into a shaky smile. “Odd. Well, it’s good to know we’re probably not a hive mind now if we’re disagreeing.”

Danny paled. “Was that a worry we should have had?”

“Between the telepathy and the way we all looked the same, yeah,” Sam said, turning back to the mirror.

“Not to mention the talking together thing we were doing,” Tucker pointed out. “It was actually a little hard to stop doing that. And was I the only one that was thinking collectively before we changed back.”

Dany fidgetted. “Kind of, but I still… We were _together,_ but I was still just me. I mean, you two were arguing about the portal.”

“Yeah, but we were saying each other’s arguments too,” Tucker pointed out.

“So not a hive mind, but some serious mind link nonsense,” Sam stated, leaning closer to the mirror and pulling up the goggles to look at her eyes. They looked like her own, but they were a sickly yellow color.

“How did you do that?” Danny asked. “Change into that?”

Sam tilted her head then the boys got a feeling: A feeling of wanting, needing to change, of lightness and emptiness, of strength and power. Then the phantom sensation of a tug just beneath their sternum.

They both let the feeling flood them and felt the tug for real. Then Tucker and Danny were transformed by blue and white rings respectively.

The trio gave a yelp as Danny jumped, then chuckled as Tucker stretched his arms in front of him. Tucker ran over to Sam’s side to look into the mirror as well.

“We really do look exactly alike,” they said as Tucker glanced between him and her.

He pushed up his own goggles to reveal his usual eyes, but neon purple.

“Our eyes are different from each others. Nice. Do we have to do the talking together thing though? Let’s see. Don’t talk. I love meat.”

Sam punched Tucker.

“Guess that’s a yeah. Uh, guys, a little help!”

Tucker and Sam blinked then turned to Danny, who was hovering five feet in the air. He was waving his arms in an attempt to move, to no effect.

“Cool,” they said as Sam went to help him and Tucker started hopping. “How did we do that? We don’t know, just help us.”

Sam grabbed his shoulder and pulled him down until his feet were on the ground. She let go and he bobbed upwards.

They snickered. “Oh shut up. Hey, we think we got i-Woah!”

The two turned to see Tucker standing on the ceiling.

“Not what we meant, but still cool.” Tucker pointed at Danny. “Eyes?”

Danny pushed his goggles up so Tucker and Sam could see his normal eyes had turned bright red.

Sam smirked.

“Nice.”

Danny closed his eyes and tried to focus on being heavy.

He transformed back and fell to the floor.

“Well, that kind of worked,” he muttered.

Tucker and Sam snickered as the latter knelt next to Danny. “You okay?”

“Fine, though I’d feel better if you weren’t laughing at me while asking.”

“Only one of us is laughing,” they said and Sam sent Tucker a look. “It’s just coming from both of us.”

Danny rolled his eyes and stood up with Sam’s help. He stared at Tucker, who was walking in circles, as Sam turned back to the mirror. “Can you get down?” he asked after a while.

“We don’t know.” Tucker sat down and smiled. “We’ll try in a little bit. This is too cool. Hey, our chests aren’t as flat as we thought.”

Danny turned to Sam, who was standing perpendicular to the mirror and frowning at it.

The two ghosts made a strangled sound then said, “It doesn’t look like we definitively have… We could just have pecs.” Sam looked down at herself and fiddled with the zipper of her suit. “It does make us wonder.”

They gave another strangled sound, then a human Tucker was plummeting from the air.

“No, no it doesn’t!” he snapped and the others turned to him. He scrambled to his feet and pointed a finger at her, a blush on his face. “I _under no circumstances_ want to know what we look like under there. And since we’ve got this mind meld thing going on, neither of you are allowed to look, you hear me?”

“What’s the problem?” Sam asked, raising an eyebrow.

He crossed his arms and glared at her. “In case you're forgetting, I’m kind of outnumbered in the lower area department. I’d prefer to think I still won out somehow.”

Danny nodded quickly. “Same.”

Sam snorted, but dropped her hand. “Alright fine. For the record though, we might not have _anything_ underneath. The Fentons said ghosts are just ectoplasm given form by post-human consciousness, right? So we could just be smooth underneath, if there’s even an underneath, to begin with. The suit might not even open.”

Tucker and Danny gave her the same horrified expression. Together, they said, “That’s _worse,_ Sam!”

She laughed, then fell through the floor.

* * *

**{Mystery Meat}**

Danny and Tucker ignored Sam joining them at their lunch table as they ate their bagged lunches.

She gave them a mental poke, but only Danny looked up. “Come on, you guys aren’t even eating the school lunch!”

“Only because we saw your plans during practice and came prepared,” Tucker muttered into his ham sandwich.

“You can’t just force your agendas on people, Sam,” Danny said.

“You’ve eaten vegan plenty of times with me!” she huffed. “You said it tasted fine.”

“Yeah, but I did so to make you feel more comfortable. My decision. It’s not right t-”

Danny’s breath fogged in front of him as Sam’s cheeks flushed and the hair on Tucker’s arms stood up. All three were immediately on their feet. Sam and Tucker’s eyes darted around as Danny dragged them towards the doors. Tucker’s eyes caught on a green glow coming from the kitchen as Sam’s landed on the furious looking Dash headed their way.

“Fenton!”

“Go, Danny, we’ll distract him.”

Tucker pouted, but said, “Kitchen. We’ll catch up.”

Danny hesitated, then slipped off without them.

* * *

“Hello, child,” the lunch lady looking ghost said as Danny nervously approached her in his ghost form. “Can you help me? Today's lunch is meatloaf, but I don't see the meatloaf. Did someone change the menu?”

_Yeah, Sam did,_ Tucker growled.

“Uh, yes?”

_Lie! Do you want to tick her off?_ Sam hissed in his head.

_She shouldn't be so bad. She looks a little like my grandmother,_ Tucker scoffed.

_And we look like teenagers. Shut up. Lie, Danny!_

“W-we mean, no,” Danny stuttered quickly as the ghost’s eyes began to narrow. “Not technically. The menu is technically the same. It’s just, uh, this week is special so the menu’s slightly different.”

“Special? A celebration?” she asked, voice sweet and innocent.

“Y-yes, exactly! It’s, uh, celebrating vegetables and their health benefits.”

“How wonderful! But meat is very important.”

“Of course, but _everyone_ knows that. The kids at this school needed to be reminded that veggies are important too, so the school put together a vegetarian week.”

_Blasphemy!_

_Sh!_

The ghost hummed as she looked out towards the cafeteria. “And the children have learned their lesson?”

_Red flag! Red flag!_

_Lie, Danny! Lie as if your afterlife relies on it, because it does,_ Sam near shouted.

_Yes, thank you, I was able to figure that out on my own._ “Of course. They can’t get enough of the new -- Temporary! -- menu. We’re sure they’ll be eating nice balanced meals when this is all over.”

“That’s good. Children need nice healthy meals.”

“Yup, definitely. So, uh, are we done here? Would you mind, you know, going back to the zone? You wouldn’t want to distract anyone from their meal.”

“No, I suppose not,” she sighed sadly and Danny felt a little bad. She did seem like a sweet old lady.

“Great, we’ll show you back to the portal if you want,” Danny said, holding out his arm like he did for Grandma Fenton.

“Such a sweet child,” she hummed, patting his cheek. “You could use more meat on your bones though.”

“Right.”

“I can find my own way home… Say, what’s your name, dearie?”

“We’re Doppelgänger,” Danny said, giving the name the trio had decided on using for their shared ghost form.

“We?”

“We.” He gave a half-nod, half-shrug motion. Even when only one of them was transformed, they couldn’t help but think of themselves as a trinity and refer to themselves as such.

The lunch lady seemed to just accept this, though, which made him wonder how weird ghosts tended to be. They’d mostly just faced animal-like creatures before.

“And you are?”

“I am the Lunch Lady.”

Yup, ghosts were just weird like that.

The Lunch Lady gave his cheek another pat then flew off.

_So, that’s taken care of,_ Danny said. He transformed back and slipped back into the hall just as Sam and Tucker left the cafeteria. “Though it might not have gone so well if you’d been there Tuck. I almost told her Sam was at fault because of you.”

“It would have been the truth,” the tech geek pointed out and Sam shoved him.

“We might want to look into ways to capture ghosts long term though,” she said. “We’re not going to be able to talk them all down and clearly they're not sticking to the portal.”

“What about that thermos thing Danny’s dad showed us before the Ectopuses showed up?” Tucker suggested.

“Are we seriously calling them that?” Sam groaned.

“I thought he said it doesn’t work,” Danny said.

Tucker’s eyes flickered purple as he smirked. “Let me have a peek at it.”

* * *

Sam and Danny watched the thermos activate with wide eyes.

“How did you do that?” the trio asked. “We’ve got Technokinesis powers. We do?”

Danny placed his hand on his computer and focused. After a moment, Tucker sent him instructions, but it didn’t help.

“Can… can we not all do it?” they said. They turned to face each other.

* * *

Sam hummed a tune as the potted plant in front of her danced.

“That’s freaky,” Tucker muttered.

She glared at him. “Chlorokinesis isn’t any freakier than Technokinesis.”

“Yeah, sure, until you go Little Shop of Horrors on us,” he said, gesturing to the Venus flytrap.

Sam stared him in the eyes as she turned the pot so he could see the name _Audrey II_ painted on the pot.

“Guys!” Danny cheered, bursting into Sam’s greenhouse.

“Danny, Sam’s making murder plants!”

“Audrey II is a sweetheart, don’t judge,” Danny said, waving Tucker off. “She only eats ectoplasm anyways.”

“What?” Tucker yelped.

“He’s joking.”

“I am?”

Sam raised an eyebrow at Danny. “I was joking when I told you that.”

“Oh.”

“Danny, did you pour ectoplasm on my plant?”

Danny squirmed under his friends' gazes.

“Oh my god!” all three muttered as they looked down at the plant.

It hadn't stopped dancing.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Sam said after a few moments.

“Yeah,” Danny said slowly before accidentally sending his friends visions of living hot dogs and turkeys and carrots and - “Anyways,” he cut in as they turned to give him horrified looks. “I have news. Good news. News unrelated to Sam’s maybe ghost plant.”

“Dude.”

Danny grabbed Sam’s hand and Tucker’s shoulder then pulled them both backward.

Suddenly they were surrounded by a star-filled void.

“What the heck?” Tucker and Sam as the three activated their ghost flight to keep from bobbing around uncontrollably in the gravity-free space. They turned to Danny, who was smiling with red eyes. “What is this?”

“A pocket dimension,” Danny said, pointing to the Fenton Thermos floating past them and they realized a few other bobs and bits were in the void as well. “I can stick things in it and pull them out whenever I want. And it’s space-themed!”

The two chuckled at his excitement.

“How’d you even figure this out?”

Danny blushed. “I fell into it. I was looking for my backpack to put the thermos in and tripped.”

They gave him big smiles.

“Shut up.” He floated off to the side and knocked on empty space, only for it to give a solid thump. “It’s not as big as it looks, maybe the size of my bedroom, but it works.”

“Great, but can you get us out again?”

“No, we’re trapped,” Danny deadpanned before shoving them out of his Space Fold.


	2. Episodes 2-8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio figure out some new powers, kick plenty of ghost butt, make a new friend, make an archenemy, and kind of get arrested.
> 
> And maybe get a little brain scrambled by that last one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably preface this by saying most chapters won't cover anywhere near this many episodes. I think there's like two in season 1 that cover 3 episodes (and one of those only covers part of the episode include, while the others cover 1-2 episodes. These ones just turned out short and sweet so they got smushed together rather than having tiny chapters.

**{Parental Bonding}**

“We can possess people!” the trio said, Tucker bouncing in midair. Sam crossed her arms. “That seems really wrong. We didn’t do it on purpose. Imagine how many dates we could get this way. We don’t need dates. We know we want to go to the dance.”

Sam turned human, dropping onto Tucker’s bed with a scowl.

Danny floated closer to her with an apologetic expression.

“Sorry,” he and Tucker said.

“It’s okay. I know you guys aren’t intentionally prying. It’s just kind of annoying sometimes.”

“We’re getting better at keeping things separate,” they said as Tucker sat down at the end of the bed. “Maybe we’ll be able to figure out secrets as we work on it. Do we need to have secrets though?”

“Yes, Danny, we do,” Sam said, poking the boy. “You might have loose lips, but I like my privacy.”

Danny pouted and transformed. “I don’t have loose lips. I just don’t get why anything has to be a secret between us. We’re best friends.”

Sam grabbed his arm and tugged him onto the bed with her.

His pout immediately fled as he curled up in her arms, his head tucking beneath her chin.

Tucker gasped and turned human. “It’s a cuddly Sam day!”

She shot him a glare. “Not for you it isn’t.”

He ignored her and joined them on the bed, pressing up to her back and draping an arm over both his friends. She grumbled, but relaxed back against him as Danny poked his head up to give them both kisses on the cheek.

They rested together for a while before Sam’s phone went off.

She nudged Danny, who’d been dozing. “Come on, it’s getting late. We should get home before someone realizes we aren’t in our beds.”

“No one will check on me before morning,” Danny said with a nuzzle.

She pushed him off the bed.

“Well then.”

Tucker sat up as the two stood and transformed. “Sam, wait.”

They turned to him.

“Uh, you know, since neither of us have dates and you really want to go, the two of us could go to the dance together as friends.”

Danny smiled and Sam tilted her head.

“Really?” they asked.

“Sure. I’ve pretty much struck out with everyone in school anyways and someone has to keep an eye on Danny.”

“Hey! True. HEY!”

* * *

**{One of a Kind}**

Skulker looked between the human boy he was tailing and the ghost child glaring down at him. He could have sworn the half-ghost was the child of the hunters Plasmius had paid him to investigate, not the boy's female friend.

* * *

No, that can’t be. He was sure the girl was the ghost child. He knew he had seen the technology-boy asleep with the hunters’ child!

* * *

Skulker gaped at the three ghost children surrounding him. “What are you?”

“We are Doppelgänger, and you are done here,” they somehow said together while sounding like only one.

 _At least he'd still accomplished the job Plasmius required,_ Skulker thought as he was pulled into a cylindrical device.

* * *

**{Attack of the Killer Garage Sale}**

“You’re not going to go to the party?” Sam asked as Danny tossed the invite Dash had given him in the trash.

“Sam, I don’t think we’d need our bond to feel your hatred for this entire situation,” Tucker said.

“Sorry.” She’d really been trying to hold back her more jealous and controlling nature since the accident. It wasn’t fair to her partners.

“It’s fine,” Danny said, knocking their shoulders together with a smile. “It’d feel weird without you guys anyways. Who would talk trash about the A-listers in our heads or get turned down by every person in the room?”

“Rude,” Tucker said.

“Besides, what would happen if a ghost showed up. Dash’s place is too far from either of yours for our mind link.”

“That’s true,” Sam agreed.

“You could always just call our phones,” Tucker said and his partners paused, surprised.

“Phones,” Sam chuckled. “How did we forget phones exist?”

“We might be getting too dependent on the mind link,” Danny laughed, rubbing his neck.

* * *

Sam and Danny looked up as Tucker dropped down onto the couch between them.

“You guys could have helped,” he huffed, passing the thermos to Danny and turning human.

“Tech’s you thing,” Danny said with a shrug, tossing the thermos into his Space Fold.

“Did you _need_ help?” Sam asked, handing Tucker a bowl of popcorn.

He snorted. “Technus, master of technology and destroyer of worlds, was running an old version of Portals XL. It was easy to slip through the cracks with my powers. That’s not the point though.”

* * *

**{Splitting Images}**

Sam and Tucker watched Danny’s parents run off, then turned to their partner. “Watch it, Danny. Your parents almost c-” they stopped, then glared. “Who are you? Where’s Danny?”

The boy who was mostly not Danny frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Sam grabbed him by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the lockers, her eyes glowing yellow.

“Tell us where our partner is now?” she and Tucker said as one and he stepped up next to her, his own eyes purple. “We can feel you’re not him!”

Poindexter immediately caved. He was smart enough to know he’d have a hard time taking on one halfa on in a fight, let alone two.

Sam was a lot more willing to hear out the old school nerd once her own nerd was safely in her arms and the three decided to let Poindexter stick around, so long as he agreed not to hurt or humiliate any of the bullies he went after, only spook them away from their targets. Especially when Danny told them about how Poindexter was treated in his own version of Casper High.

And they thought Dash was bad.

* * *

**{What You Want}**

_You said she’s a genie ghost? Why didn’t you just wish her into the thermos?_ Sam asked.

Tucker and Danny shared a look from where they were hovering over the sick girl’s home.

_You both are idiots. Get out of here before one of my parents spot you._

_We’re invisible,_ they pointed out, but said their goodbyes and left all the same.

“Why didn’t we think of wishing her away? Because only one of us got all the common sense when the portal mashed us together. True. Oh, man! What? We forgot to share about the plasmablasts! Shoot, we’re dead. No puns right now, this is serious!”

* * *

**{Bitter Reunions}**

“Bad news,” Danny said as soon as he picked up the group call. “My parents are dragging me and my sister with them to their college reunion in Wisconsin.”

 _“That sucks,”_ Tucker hissed.

 _“Yeah, but our news is worse,”_ Sam said. _“Knock knock.”_

Her words were matched with a knock at Danny’s window and he opened the curtains to find Sam floating outside.

 _“Who’s there?”_ Tucker asked.

“Sam,” Danny said, gesturing her in.

_“Sam who?”_

“Sam’s at my window,” Danny snorted as she floated through intangibly. “What’s going on?”

_“Wait, she’s at your house? Why? Do I need to come?”_

“No, we took care of the problem for now.” Sam reached into the bag she’d strapped to her belt -- Danny could open the Space Fold for her and Tucker from a distance, but they only really did that for the thermos -- and pulled out a torn picture. “Look familiar.”

“Is that my dad?” Danny asked, taking it. The man in the picture certainly looked like his dad did in his collage pictures.

“That’s what we thought too.”

_“What’s going on?”_

“We took on this group of vulture ghosts just now and they had a picture of Mr. Fenton,” Sam explained. “They said they were on a search and destroy mission.”

_“They want to kill Danny’s dad?”_

“Why?”

“We don’t know,” Sam sighed. “They got away from us before we could interrogate them properly. We could have used our speed.”

“Sorry, my parents are in an inventing lull so they’re actually paying attention to my curfew,” Danny said, still looking at the picture.

_“I still don’t get why Danny’s faster than us.”_

“Tiny.”

_“You mean smol.”_

“No.”

_“Yes. And it’s not fair.”_

“You take hits better than Sam and I,” Danny pointed out. “And Sam’s stronger than us. It balances out. Now can we get back to the fact that someone put a hit out on my dad?”

“Sorry, we don’t know anything else.”

_“At least you guys are going out of town. Hopefully, Sam and I can track down the birds before you get back.”_

“Yeah, I hope so.”

Sam took her partner’s hand and pulled him into a hug.

* * *

_“Holy crow.”_

“Tell us about it,” Danny groaned.

 _“We should have been there,”_ his partners said.

“We’re kind of glad we weren’t,” Danny said, poking his head into the RV for a second to make sure his parents and sister were still asleep. “Who knows what Vlad would have done if he knew about us? He thinks we use the royal we.”

_“We can’t believe there’s another halfa out there. And he’s such a creep. Do we think he’d want us? Or only one of us?”_

Danny frowned, rubbing his chest. It was weird being in ghost form, hearing his partners in their ghost form, and yet not being a part of the mind link. “We don’t know. And we don’t want to know. He doesn’t need to be anywhere near us. He’s a fruit loop.”

_“Agreed.”_

* * *

**{Prisoners of Love, Part 1}**

The trio floated back to back as they looked around the Ghost Zone. Danny pressed closer to his partners, eyeing a group of small blobs that he swore was following him, while Sam vibrated with excitement and Tucker snapped pictures with his phone.

“Can we just find the gift already? This place is amazing. No, it's not. It's creepy. And it goes on forever. We don't even know where to start to look! Maybe we can ask for directions?”

Tucker flew up to one of the doors. He knocked and opened it.

“Excuse me,” they said. “Would you be able to -”

“Get. Out. Of. My. ROOM!”

Tucker shut the door.

“Well, that won’t work. This is hopeless. We’re never gonna find that present. Our folks are gonna get divorced and it’s gonna be all our fault.”

Sam wrapped her arms around Danny.

“We’ll figure this out. Maybe we just need to think like a box. Think like a box? Well, the box isn’t a ghost. It’s from the human world.” Danny’s head popped up. “Yes, maybe the ghost zone’s gravity affects human world stuff differently than ghost stuff. If we can track the orbital paths, then we can figure out where the box went. But how would we figure out these orbital paths? We know one way. No.”

Tucker flew down to one of the floating islands, then transformed.

“Stop!” Sam and Danny shouted, flying up to him. “We don’t know how the Ghost Zone will affect a human. Our parents haven’t run any tests yet!”

“I’m fine, see,” Tucker said, gesturing at himself. “I can even breathe just fine. Everything’s okay.”

“For now.”

“I think it’s a little too late to worry about ectoplasmic radiation, so what are you two so worried about.”

“Only one of us is worried. We’re both worried.”

Sam shoved Danny, then shoved Tucker when he started laughing.

The boy yelped and braced himself when the shove knocked him towards a tree.

He passed right through it.

“What the heck?” the two said.

Tucker stood up and set his hand on the tree. Then he pressed down and his hand slipped through the tree, coming out the other side.

Danny dropped down next to him and tried to do the same, but couldn’t get his arm to go through the tree even when he turned intangible.

Sam snapped her fingers.

“Ectoplasm. Everything here is made of ectoplasm. Maybe being in the ghost zone naturally puts everything in a semi-intangible state, which means humans can pass through it if they try.”

“So we’re the ghosts here!” Tucker cheered, bouncing. “Sweet!”

“It’s definitely something to keep in mind.”

Tucker smiled and held up his arms. “Now that that’s settled, let’s see how this human gets affected by ghost gravity.”

Danny hesitated, but Sam shrugged and picked Tucker up and threw him into the void.

He flew a few yards before slowing down until he was just floating in place. They waited a moment, but nothing else happened.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Tucker said then transformed.

Danny and Sam flew up to him, all three saying, “That should have worked though. There has to be some sort of orbit or else the box would have just been right outside the portal and we check right after it got knocked in.”

Tucker shrugged and pulled out his phone. Danny’s eyes locked onto it. He grabbed it out of Tucker’s hand and tossed it.

“Hey! Look, it’s moving!”

The trio watched as the phone’s trajectory slowed, then started again slightly to the right of where it had been heading before.

“Humans might just be too heavy or dense for ghost orbit. Or maybe it’s a consciousness thing, like with the intangibility. Whatever it is, let’s just get going. If we lose our phone, we’re going to regret it.”

The three set off drifting a short ways behind the phone. They stuck close enough to be sure they didn’t lose it, but far enough that they wouldn’t accidentally alter its course. Eventually, the phone floated intangibly through one of the doors, this one looking like a rolling warehouse door.

The trio shared a look then opened the door and flew inside.

The lair was just a purple void filled with a variety of random items.

“So this is where all that stuff ends up. It’s like the void of lost items,” they said as Tucker grabbed his phone.

“Yes!” the trio turned to see the Box Ghost flying up. “It all ends up in the possession of THE BOX GHOST!”

“Ugh, this guy. What are you doing here? Don’t you have a cardboard box to haunt.”

Boxy blinked looking between the three before pointing at Sam, who was floating in the middle.

“I am The Box Ghost! Where do you think we go when you release us from your round, cylindrical trap?”

Danny looked unimpressed, Sam crossed her arms and started looking over all the junk, and Tucker ran a hand over his face.

“It is not our turn to deal with this. You mean the Fenton Thermos? The gift has to be here somewhere.”

He looked between them then threw up his arms _menacingly._ “I am the Box Ghost!”

“We know.”

“And beware! For I am merely ONE of your foes who reside in this realm! In fact, you might say,” the box ghost snorted, “we’re a PACKAGE DEAL!”

“I swear if we laugh at that, we’ll punch us. We’re not laughing at that. It’s the Box Ghost. We would laugh at that. That was a bad pun even for us.” They groaned and Danny floated closer to Boxy, holding his hands up in a show of good faith. “Look, we’re looking for something important, we don’t have time for your box puns.”

Suddenly police sirens sounded and the trio looked around.

“Flee!” Boxy shouted. “Lest you be hermetically sealed and shipped to your doom!” He tried to fly off, but a blast of green energy hit him, causing his wrists to be bound in handcuffs made of energy.

Sam and Tucker flew up to grab Danny’s arms. “Hey, what’s going on? We need to get out of here! Let’s -”

A blast hit them and they were bound together.

“Unauthorized duplication. That’s against the rules.” The trio looked up to see a large white ghost hovering over them. He pulled out a green book. “Or at least it is now.”

“Duplication? Like Plasmius? Wait! This is all a big misunderstanding! We’re not -”

The ghost moved so it was like he was crouched on invisible ground and shoved his face into Tucker’s. He grabbed Tucker’s phone and said, “There may be chaos everywhere in this Ghost Zone, but there’ll be order in my prison.” He stood up and turned to a group of ghosts in riot gear. “Merge them and ship them off.”

One of the ghosts smiled and pointed a police baton at them.

“Hold on! You’ve got the wrong -”

He shot them with a blast and a ring of energy wrapped around them and squeezed. It grew tighter and tighter and their bodies were pressed closer and closer.

“Stop! Wait! Please!”

And then there was a snap. It wasn’t audible. It wasn’t even physical. It was just a _feeling_ as three bodies became one.

Doppelgänger looked down at their hands in shock, their mind a whirl of emotions and thoughts. They barely noticed as the ghost police grabbed their arms and threw them in the back of a prisoner transport van.

“We’re one?” they whispered, staring at their hands.

They certainly didn’t feel like one. They could feel Sam's and Danny's and Tucker’s minds rioting against one another in their head. It was like the trio were all trying to overshadow each other at once. Their body shook with hot and cold and lightning. They tried to pull apart, but the bands on their wrists, ankles, and waist kept their powers dulled and their ectoplasm merged.

The police returned and Doppelgänger shuffled into the corner of the van to keep away from the monsters. Thankfully they only shoved the Box Ghost inside and shut the doors.

Doppelgänger turned to the wall of the van. “If we transform, we can slip out. Can we transform with these bonds? Better question, what would happen if we transformed like this?” They shivered at the idea of being merged in their human forms. “Yeah, no. We need to figure out how to separate, then we can transform and get away from these psychos. Seriously, as if living corrupt police weren’t bad enough. We need to focus. Can this situation get any worse? Our folks are splitting up, our sister’s a basket case, and we’re going to ghost jail.” They curled up, trying to hold themselves as best they could with their bonds. “It will be okay. We’ll be okay. They’ll have to remove the bonds at some point then we can get away. It will be okay.”


	3. Episodes 8.5-9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio causes a prison riot and beat up a student counselor.

**{Prisoners of Love, Part 2}**

Doppelgänger only realized the van they’d been tossed into had been moving when it stopped. They looked up as the doors opened.

“Out,” one of the cops growled.

They awkwardly got to their feet, their three minds all trying to control their body. They tried to shuffle to the doors and promptly fell out of the van.

Danny started apologizing, Sam started cursing, and Tucker started laughing.

A sound came from their mouth that sounded more like television static than words.

“Get up,” the cop growled.

The static got louder and they shakily got their arms and legs under them. It took a few moments, but they eventually got to their feet. They looked up and froze.

In the prison yard next to where the van was parked were Skulker, Technus, Desiree, and quite a few other random ghosts they’d fought over the past few months.

The ghosts had been watching the van and they all took on smirks or scowls when they saw Doppelgänger.

“Well, if it isn’t one of the young whelps who helped us get locked up in this stinking place!” Skulker said, crossing his arms and giving them a vicious grin. “Welcome home.”

The static grew to a screech before finally forming words. “We’re in trouble. Do you think shankings still happen in ghost prison?”

One of the police ghosts -- guards? -- grabbed their arm and dragged them into the prison. He shoved them into a small room where a pair of striped prison clothes waited. “Get changed,” he said as their bonds disconnected from each other, keeping their powers bound but allowing for freedom of movement. “You’ve got a meeting with the warden, then you can go see your friends in the cafeteria.”

“Friends,” they growled as he shut the door to the room with a smirk. “I’ll show him friends.” They moved to grab the clothes, then jerked back violently. They collapsed to the floor. “We can’t take off the hazmat suit. We’ll get in trouble if we don’t put the clothes on though.” After a moment’s deliberation, they struggled to their feet and grabbed the pants. They haphazardly began to put them on over the suit.

“Can you believe he thought we were just duplicates? Well, it makes sense. We do look exactly alike as long as we’re wearing our goggles. Remember how freaked out Skulker was when he realized we were a trinity. And how many ghosts have actually seen all of us fighting together?” They paused, one arm in the prison shirt. “Skulker and Sidney know, but Sidney never talks to anyone but us and the chess club. Skulker obviously didn’t tell the fruit loop so he might not have told anyone else. The dragon, Technus, and Vlad have only ever seen one of us change and Technus thought we were one of us. The same goes for Boxy and Desiree, but for each of the other ones of us. Holy crow, does everyone just think we’re one ghost going around kicking butt and duplicating now and then? That’s hilarious!”

They finished buttoning up the shirt and their bonds disappeared.

Energy blasted out of them, scorching the walls and leaving flickering fires surrounding them.

They collapsed as they forced the energy down, shaking. They spewed static as they tried to get their energy under control without the bonds to inhibit it. They tried to figure out why the ghost prison would allow them their powers, then they felt it. There was something in the prison clothes trying to inhibit their powers, emphasis on _trying._ The clothes were obviously only designed with one ghost in mind. They could feel the power of the clothes wrapping around Sam, then Tucker, then Danny, then Sam. Always trying to lash them down, but only managing one at a time.

The energy of the others was spilling out, trying to fit into the too-small space their body made.

They were about to separate, but then Sam got an idea. The boys hesitated and went over the idea. Slowly, they perked up with excitement and all three pulled themselves in, shrinking their power as much as they could without transforming. Even still, white-blue-purple light flickered at their waist and energy buzzed across their skin, hidden mostly by the prison clothes.

Danny and Tucker allowed their minds to go blank, allowing Sam to take control of them. She quickly put out as much of the flames as she could and placed herself in front of the door so that the guard couldn’t see much of the room when he came back.

Thankfully it worked and he didn’t say a word as he led her through the halls to an office, where he chained her to a chair.

“Doppelgänger, is it?” the white ghost from before said as he marched in and the guard left.

“That’s us,” Sam chirped.

He glared at her and opened his green book. “Trespassing, loitering, creating a disturbance, and possession of real-world contraband.”

She opened her mouth to comment, then her eyes widened as a gift box floated past. “The gift! Mr. -”

The warden grabbed her by her shirt. “Walker, son. Kn-”

“Not a boy,” she said.

“Don’t interrupt me, girl.”

“Not a girl either.”

Walker threw her back onto the chair and she barely stopped it from toppling over.

“You better learn quick that your jokes won’t earn you any favors here.”

“It wasn’t a joke,” she muttered.

“I am your judge, executioner, jury, executioner, jailer, and, if necessary, your executioner.”

She stared blankly at him. “You said executioner three times and we’re ghosts. If you’re going for scare tactics, then we should point out we kind of already did the death thing so executioners aren’t exactly scary.”

Walker smacked her across the face with enough force to knock over the chair.

“Son of a bi-iscuit,” she growled into the floor, barely keeping a hold on the three’s power as Danny and Tucker swirled back into consciousness. “We’re feeding him to Audrey II. No, she’s got better taste than that. True.”

“Seeing how this is your first offense, I was willing to be lenient. Now though… five thousand years!”

“Ok boomer,” they snorted.

He scowled and waved at the door. “Get it out of my sight!”

“Wow, we’re an _it_ now. Just call us _they_ you coward,” they said as a guard came to unchain them. “Did we have to antagonize him that much? No, but it was fun. Yeah, that’s fair. We're insane.”

The guard dragged them up and out of the office. A few halls over they were shoved into a cafeteria. “Chow time! Move it out!”

“Huh, so ghosts do eat,” they said as they stared around the too familiar settings. “It’s kind of like school.” Their eyes landed on the table where Skulker, Technus, Desiree, and Boxy were sitting. “Wow, heh, pretty much everyone who hates us all at one table. It’s _exactly_ like school.”

As they tried to get themselves back into some semblance of order, they watched Skulker stand up and march up to them. The others stood, but stayed behind to watch.

“Hey, Skulky, question before we do this: Does everyone really think we’re just one ghost duplicating?”

Skulker cracked his metallic knuckles. “As far as I’m aware.”

“Wild.”

He stopped in front of them, towering over them as other ghosts began to gather around. In a low voice, he asked, “So which one are you then: the hunter, the geek, or the girl?”

Doppelgänger gave a smile that was all fangs for Sam, crossed their arms and tilted their head mockingly for Danny, and laughed in Skulker’s face for Tucker. “Yes.”

Skulker gave a confused frown, then his eyes widened and he backed away.

Their grin grew and they tapped at the tight rubber band-like feeling that had been growing in them since they’d been forced together. It snapped and the prison clothes were disintegrated as they split apart in an explosion of energy that knocked down every ghost in the room.

The trio instantly went to work. Tucker and Sam fired plasma blasts at the guards near the doors and on the catwalks while Danny opened his Space Fold, allowing six of Audrey II’s bathtub-sized _heads_ to emerge. He set her upon the guards, then he and Tucker turned their attention to their fellow prisoners.

The lot looked caught between horror and excitement.

“Are you all going to try to fight us or are we getting out of here?” the trio asked. Danny raised a hand to shield them from a guard’s blast and Tucker took control of all the guard’s batons, forcing them to stop working.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend, for now,” Skulker said, eyeing the flytrap head that had just scooped up two guards and began dissolving them in the acid dripping from their lobes.

“No, don’t eat them, Twoey. They’re bad. They’ll give you a stomach ache. We’ll feed you when we get home,” the trio said, Danny turning to wag his finger at the plant.

The flytrap spat them out then started grabbing and tossing the guards around instead.

“You feed your plant ghosts?” Desiree asked, looking ill.

“No, we feed her ectoplasm. She’s still learning the difference between pure ectoplasm and inhabited ectoplasm though,” they said and Sam scratched one of the plant’s lobes _._ “Now are we going to get out of here?”

The prisoner ghosts nodded quickly and started rioting.

“We should probably send Twoey back before she accidentally eats one of them,” they said quietly and Danny flew over to lure the stalks back into the fold. “We’ll go for the gift while we lead these guys out of the prison. Alright, meet up on the other side.”

Sam flew out of the cafeteria and transformed. Humming, she made her way through the halls until she reached Walker’s office. She slipped through the door to see the warden yelling into a microphone.

“Guards, what’s going on down there? Somebody answer me!”

She rolled her eyes and walked over to the present.

“You? What are you doing here? Who are you?” Walker growled as she grabbed it out of the air.

She set it on her hip and turned to the warden. “I’m Doppelgänger, duh.”

He snarled and tried to grab her, only to pass right through.

She ignored him as she grabbed Tucker’s phone off his desk.

“Why can’t I touch you?” he asked as he kept trying for her.

“I’m a halfa, moron. Half-ghost, half-human. And humans are the intangible ones here.” She gave him a wink and walked through the wall.

She kept going until she passed through the outer wall, then paused. “Now where are my boys at?”

“Have fun?”

She smiled and turned to Tucker and Danny. “I got your parent’s present and ticked off a prison warden. Today was a great day.” She passed Danny the box, then handed Tucker his phone before transforming to join them in the air.

“My baby,” they said as Tucker nuzzled the phone. “Don’t make us say that! Come one, let’s head home.” They paused. “Do we know how we know how to get back to the portal? Maybe because we _died_ there? Or formed there? How about we not think about that and just head home? Yeah, alright, it’s interesting though. Interesting as in morbid? Yes.”

They laughed and flew off.

* * *

**{My Brother's Keeper}**

Sam checked her watch and frowned. _Danny? What’s taking you so long? Did a ghost show up?_

_Yeah, but that’s not the problem. The thing got away and left me in the smoking remains of the new guidance counselor's office. Lancer and Jazz found me and now they’re making me talk to her. Apparently, Jazz convinced him it would do me some good to talk to her because I’ve been “pulling away from everyone except his partners” and she’s worried we’ll become “overly dependant.”_

_Yikes, sorry, dude,_ Tucker said.

 _If she only knew,_ Sam snorted. _Want us to bring you some lunch?_

_Yes, please. I don’t know how long she’s going to keep me here._

_On our way._

The two stood up and Tucker grabbed their lunches while Sam went to grab some for Danny.

“You know, Jazz might have a point,” Tucker said as they headed to the office.

“Seriously?”

“I mean, when was the last time we did anything apart?” Tucker pointed out. “I know I haven’t hung out with the computer club since the new school year started.”

Sam frowned and tried to think of the last time she’d been to a poetry night. “Oh.”

“Yeah. And how much do you want to bet Danny’s been skipping out on time at the observatory?”

“Okay, yeah,” Sam sighed. “Maybe we should schedule more personal time.”

“Before we really do become a hive mind,” Tucker chuckled, only half-joking.

“We wo-” Sam cut off as heat flooded her cheeks. She looked to Tucker to see him staring down at his arms. “Hair standing up?”

He nodded.

They stuffed their lunches into an empty locker and transformed.

Sam pointed at the counselor's office.

“Think the ghost came back? Wouldn’t one of us have noticed? Even if we did, we wouldn’t be able to do anything with the counselor there.”

The two shrugged and turned invisible.

When they stuck their heads through the wall, they saw Danny sitting in a chair looking miserable while a perky redhead came up to him.

“I'm not saying you're a loser, Danny,” she said, stepping behind him. “I think you're a great kid!”

She grabbed his shoulders and their eyes widened when they saw a flicker of green energy passing from Danny to her.

“Then why do I feel so miserable?” their partner asked, slouching down.

The two snarled and Sam blasted her away from him.

“Woah!” Danny said, jumping up as they landed in the room.

Tucker immediately placed himself between the redhead and Danny while Sam had a nearby potted fern grab the ghost.

“What are you doing, uh, ghosts?” Danny said, backing away.

“Get somewhere safe,” they said. “She’s not what she appears.”

Danny nodded and ran out the door.

Suddenly a blob ghost tackled Tucker. “I thought you said it was the Fenton kid, Spectra,” it hissed.

“I thought it was!” she growled, phasing through the plant.

“Stay away,” the two snarled as Sam ripped the blob off Tucker. She punched it and sent it crashing into Spectra.

It helped the redhead back up, then turned to them with a furious glare. It transformed itself into the shape of a bee, only to be sucked up by the thermos.

The two looked up to see Danny poking halfway through the ceiling, waving.

“No,” Spectra shouted and black clouds formed around her. They rose to cover her, then dispersed, leaving her as a literal shadow of herself.

Unimpressed, the three blasted her before Danny sucked her into the thermos as well.

He gave it a hard shake as he dropped down next to his partners and they all transformed.

“That’s what you get for trying to mess with my head.” He gave it another shake then put the thermos in his Space Fold.

“Feel better?” Sam asked.

“Much.” He pressed into her side and she wrapped an arm around him.

“Good, now let’s get out of here before we get blamed for this,” Tucker said, gesturing to the upended plant and cracked wall.

* * *

Jazz fidgeted slightly as she made her way down the hall. She really should leave this to the professional and let Danny work through things without her intervention, but she couldn’t help but want to check on him. Her brother had been closing himself off from the world and that wasn’t healthy. His partners were no better, but she didn’t have any authority to help them. Hopefully, when they saw how much Danny benefited from it, they’d consider getting help too.

She turned the corner and then ducked back around when she saw Danny come running out of Ms. Spectra’s office. She peeked out to see Danny looking around then he held his arms up. Her eyes widened as she saw him transform into a green creature in a flash of white rings.

“What was that?” she whispered as he floated up and pulled a Fenton Thermos out of nowhere before diving upwards. She ran up to the office and looked through the window to see two people that looked just like the… whatever Danny had turned into facing off against a green blob and Ms. Spectra. The blob suddenly turned into a giant bee, only to get sucked into a thermos held by a third green creature -- _Danny? Wait, he used the thermos! Does that mean they're ghosts? Ghosts are real!_ \-- that emerged from the ceiling.

Then all three took down Ms. Spectra -- Who was also a ghost? Maybe? She turned into a shadow! -- before they all transformed. Danny from the one with the thermos using white rings like before. The one next to him turned into Sam using purple rings. The last turned into Tucker using blue rings.

_Are they all ghosts? Why did they look exactly alike? Is this why they’re always hiding away together?_

“Feel better?”

“Much.”

“Good, now let’s get out of here before we get blamed for this.”

Jazz eye’s widened and she ducked down and ran for the corner. She slipped around it just as she heard the door open. She looked back to see the three come out of the office, Danny still tucked against Sam’s side while arm-in-arm with Tucker.

He smiled up at them and kissed them both on the cheek. “Thanks for the save back there.”

“Of course, dude.”

“You’re our partner, we’re always going to take care of you.”

Jazz smiled and left the three.

* * *

“What?”

“Nothing,” Jazz said quickly, turning her gaze back to her food.

Her eyes slid back to her brother.

“Ugh! What?”

“Nothing!” She shouldn’t say anything, should she? He’d get defensive. But a little push couldn’t hurt, right? “Uh, so, uh, Danny, I know I've been kind of hard on you lately, but you know I think you're great, right?”

He looked surprised before ducking his head. “I-I guess. I mean, I thought so, but I’ve been hearing things.”

“Then you've heard wrong,” she said, grabbing his shoulder and squeezing it. _Well, he certainly feels solid. Human. And he’s breathing so-No, focus._ “Look, I know you think I'm pushy and I'm a know-it-all. I know you think I can be a jerk sometimes…” she trailed off as he saw the dorky smile on his face. “You know, you can stop me at any time.”

“I know.”

She sighed and let go of him. “All I'm saying is I'm your sister and I care about you. And even though you don't think I'll understand, you can talk to me about anything.”

He bit his lip and looked away. After a moment, he glanced at her, “I -”

An explosion sounded in the family room. They ran to the door to see the couch was smoking and their dad was holding up some new device while their mom watched on.

“I'm just saying, if we can find that ghost at Jazz's school, we can peel that ghost like an onion!” their dad said.

“Well we can't completely vaporize it,” their mom reasoned. “Don't you want to at least examine the remains?”

Danny’s shoulders hunched up and he went back to the table. “I don't feel like talking about it.”

“Yeah, I'd imagine not,” she said, holding back a glare. Why did her parents’ obsession with ghosts always have to ruin things? She followed him back to the table and kissed him on the head.

He squirmed away with a glare, but she ignored him as she went back to her meal.

“I… Jazz?”

“Yeah?” she said, head popping up. Maybe her parents hadn’t messed things up after all.

“Sam, Tuck, and I were talking and… Maybe, _maybe,_ you were right about us spending too much time together so… Would you want to go to the observatory tomorrow?”

She blinked, then smiled. “Sure, little brother.”

Not exactly what she’d been hoping for, but it was a step in the right direction. He could tell her when he's ready.


	4. Episodes 10-12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio makes a new... friend? Enemy? Frenemy? Also, Danny doesn't get a dog (except he kind of does), Sam considers murder, and Tucker cheats.

**{Shades of Gray}**

“Thanks, but I'll pass,” Valerie scoffed.

The trio’s ghost senses went off and Sam turned away from the popular girl. _I got it._ “Same.”

Danny opened his Space Fold while Tucker distracted Valerie, dropping the thermos into Sam’s waiting hand before she climbed onto her scooter to ride off.

“Are you sure you don’t want an-”

“I’m sure,” she scoffed, shoving Tucker away. “Get lost.”

Suddenly the ground began to shake and the ghost dog burst from the ground.

Danny gasped and ducked to the side as Valerie’s dresser was knocked over. His eyes flickered red as he used a bit of ghost strength to catch it before it could fall into the street.

“Wow, nice catch, loser.”

Danny quickly pushed the dresser upright and let go of his ghost power before Valerie came into view. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Thanks, I think.”

“No, thank you.” She looked over the dresser, sighing with relief. She turned to him with a critical eye. “You’re stronger than you look.”

Danny didn’t get a chance to answer before he was plowed over by a ghost puppy.

“Danny!”

As Danny groaned and rubbed his head, the puppy yapped and licked his cheek. He looked up to see it prancing on his chest with its little flame tail wagging. He turned to Tucker and Valerie, who were staring. “Uh, help?”

“Got it,” Sam said, appearing at his side to scoop up the dog by its collar.

The dog immediately started growling and Sam dropped it as it grew into its giant form. Danny scrambled away, but it kept its eyes on the ghost girl.

She flew back as it snapped at her, holding her hands up. “Easy there!”

It crouched down, hackles raised and Sam prepared her ecto blasts.

Without thinking, Danny opened his Space Fold and the dog disappeared inside.

Sam hesitated, glanced at Danny, then shook her fist. “And stay gone!”

“You!” Valerie growled. “Whatever you are, get out of here! You and you're stupid dog have done enough!”

Sam scowled back. “The dog’s not ours. We’re a cat person.”

Danny frowned. _I object._

 _Overruled,_ Tucker and Sam both said.

“We?” Valerie asked.

Sam gestured to herself. “We.”

“You’re referring to yourself as _we?_ What a weirdo.”

“And here we were about to apologize for what happened to the lab,” Sam snorted and turned invisible. “Nevermind. Have a nice life.”

“You little freak!”

Danny and Tucker shared a look as Danny got up. “Well, I gotta go. Uh, my parents. They’ll want to know about the, uh, ghost sighting.”

“Ghosts?” Valerie asked as he went to his scooter. “Oh my gosh! Those were ghosts?”

“Yeah, hence the whole flying and invisibility and stuff,” Danny said before riding off.

“Why does he need to tell his parents?”

“Oh, Danny’s parents are professional ghost hunters. Kind of,” Tucker said awkwardly. “Didn’t you know?”

“No.” She watched the paler boy turn the corner then turned to Tucker with a flirtatious smile. “Is that offer of help still good?”

“Y-yeah, absolutely!”

“Where’s Tucker?” Sam asked as she met Danny in human form.

He shrugged. _Tuck?_

_I’ll catch up!_

The two rolled their eyes.

“How long do you think he’s going to be hanging around her until he realizes she’s not interested?”

“Too long,” Sam said and the two sent off. “Now, why’d you send the dog to the fold? I could have taken it.”

Danny shrugged. “You were going to blast it. You can’t blast a dog.”

“It’s not a dog, it’s a ghost.” She looked over at him with narrowed eyes. “We can’t keep him, Danny.”

“I don’t want to keep him. He’s a menace. I just don’t want to see him blasted.”

“Is that why you didn’t send him to the ghost zone?”

“I did,” Danny huffed. “He just got back out.”

“And now he’s trashing the fold.”

Danny tilted his head. “I don’t think he is. It’s quiet inside.”

“Whatever. You better not have anything of mine in there.”

Danny bit his lip. Did he return that spider plushy he’d _borrowed_ from Sam to use as a pillow last week? “Maybe I should check on him.”

He ignored her glare as he slipped into an alley. After being sure no one could see him, he poked his head into the fold. Thankfully it hadn’t found the plushie, though it was chewing on the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick in its puppy form.

The dog looked up at him and started wagging its tail, so he quickly pulled his head out. “He’s good.”

Sam shook her head. “You’re lucky Audrey II’s not in there anymore.”

“Oh yeah, how’re the Fenton Shears working?”

“Perfect. Strangely enough, she actually likes to be pruned.”

“Yap!”

The two turned to see the ghost dog’s head sticking out of empty air. It gave a dog-smile before its head was replaced by paws making digging motions. Slowly a hole in the air formed, revealing the Space Fold. The dog jumped through the hole and into Danny’s arms.

“Woah!”

“I guess we know how it’s getting out of the Ghost Zone now,” Sam said, looking between the hole and the dog.

“Bad Cujo, no digging,” Danny said, shifting the dog into one arm and waving a finger in its face.

“Don’t name it!” Sam snapped. Then flinched back when the dog started to growl at her.

“No, no, it’s okay. Sam’s a friend.” Danny scratched the dog under its chin and it relaxed.

“You’re getting attached.”

“Am not.” Danny grabbed the edge of the hole and pulled it closed. “I’m just trying to keep it from hulking out.”

Sam made a disbelieving sound and knelt so she could see the dog better without getting closer. “It’s got the Axion Labs logo on its collar.”

“What? Oh yeah, I saw that earlier. It must have slipped my mind after the rampage.”

She transformed and lifted off the ground. “That’s the first place he hit. Maybe there’s something there that could help us get rid of him. He could be an old guard dog. We’ll check it out. Keep him calm.”

“Why me?”

Sam stuck her hand towards him and the dog started growling.

“Alright, fair. But what do I do with him?”

“Train him? Play with him? Take him for a walk? Ghost dog or not, he's still a dog… We think. Good luck!”

Danny glared as she flew off, then looked down at the dog. “Guess it’s just you and me… Wanna take a walk through the ghost zone?”

Cujo gave a yap and wiggled in his arms excitedly.

* * *

_“I think I’m actually going to miss him. The look on Skulker’s face when he stole his leg was priceless.”_

_“What did I say about getting attached?”_

Tucker rolled his eyes as he walked invisibly across the outside of a warehouse. “We still can’t believe this was all over a squeaky toy.”

 _“Just be glad I took care of it before something really bad happened,”_ Sam said.

An explosion just missed Tucker, who darted away with a yelp.

_“TUCKER?”_

He turned to see a woman in full-body red hazmat standing on a hoverboard holding a grenade launcher. He took off, but she followed. “We might need some help. There’s a girl here with a _really big gun_ and she’s not setting off our ghost sense.”

 _“I’m not far. I’ll be there in a second,”_ Danny said and hung up.

 _“A human hunter? And it’s not Danny’s_ mom?” Sam asked.

“Nope. And she can see us while we’re invisible.”

A blast flew past him.

“Her aim isn’t good though. Can’t be our mom then, her aim is scary,” Danny and Tucker said as Danny came near.

Tucker turned a corner and Danny was there, raising a shield as the hunter threw a handful of throwing stars. Only a few made it to them, and even then they bounced off the shield.

“What? There’s two of you?” the hunter said, pulling to a stop.

“Duplication,” they said, shrugging.

 _“Wait? Is that Valerie?”_ Sam asked.

“Valerie?” they said, surprised.

The hunter flinched back. “How did y- It doesn’t matter. I’m ending you.”

The two shared a look, then Tucker held out his hand toward the hoverboard.

Nothing happened.

“Ugh, technokinesis proof,” they groaned.

She fired the grenade launcher at them and the shield shattered.

The two groaned as they pulled themselves out of their shared crater. “We can’t fight her, we’ll hurt her. She doesn’t seem to care about hurting us. Don’t we have a crush on her? Not anymore. We hate technokinesis proof tech. Well, at least some good came out of this. Now go.”

Tucker glared, but dove into the ground while Danny flew past the girl.

She took the bait and chased after the faster of the halfas, letting Tucker slip away.

As soon as his partner was safe, Danny waved at Valerie then began flying through buildings until the hunter, unable to go intangible, lost him.

* * *

**{Fanning the Flames}**

“I think we’re the only ones in the whole school who aren’t obsessed with Ember,” Tucker said as they passed yet another of their classmates wearing the rocker’s swag.

“I don’t get it!” Danny said with a frown. “She comes outta nowhere and suddenly she’s the biggest thing since iPhones! It’s so -”

“Infuriating how mindless pre-packaged corporate bubble gum is preventing true musical artists from being heard?” Sam interrupted.

“I was gonna say weird, but, uh, okay.”

“I’m with Sam. She’s okay, but there are way better groups out there who don’t get anywhere near enough spotlight.”

“We’re not listening to your Swedish pop-techno music,” Sam said. “I’d rather listen to -”

The trio stopped as they came to a school hallway that had been vandalized with posters, stickers, and banners for Ember McLain.

“Ember.”

Paulina came up to them wearing an Ember shirt with matching pants. She looked at Sam and scoffed. “Nice earrings. Sale at the 89 cent store?”

Sam’s hand came up to the Fenton Phones she was wearing. Danny’s parents had invented them to filter out spectral noise, but they also worked as wireless headphones and long-range communicators. The trio had taken to using them during lone patrols and ghost fights that separated them enough that their link couldn’t reach. While the boys only really wore them then, Sam wore them often since she thought they made great techno-goth earrings.

She dropped her hand and gave the popular girl an annoyed look as she stepped closer to Danny. “For your information, Paulina. They’re a gift. Danny gave them to me.”

“Really? He gave you earrings?” Paulina pointed between the two with a smirk. “I always knew you two losers would end up together.”

“We’re not losers!” Sam shouted and Danny added, “We’re not together.”

“Well now I feel left out,” Tucker joked as Paulina swaggered off.

“Shut up, Tucker,” the two snapped.

“Hey, check it out! The lovebirds are ganging up on Foley!” Dash snickered to Kwan.

“They can deny it all they want, but I saw Fenton kissing her when they snuck out at lunch yesterday,” Kwan snickered back.

Danny blushed and Sam jumped for the jocks while Tucker tried to hold her back. “It’s called QPR, you neanderthals! Welcome to the twenty-first century! A guy can kiss a girl on the cheek without it being romantic or se-”

“And we’re done here!” Danny squeaked and grabbed Sam to unsuccessfully help Tucker drag her away.

“Calm down, Sam. It’s not like any of us go around talking about our relationship,” Tucker said. “Of course everyone’s going to think you’re dating if they see you two kissing.”

“People shouldn’t assume things like that just because Danny likes to kiss us or the three of us hug!”

“It’s high school. Assumptions and gossip are the lifeblood of this place,” Danny said. “No need to kill Dash over it. Now stow the soapbox and let’s get to class before we’re late.”

Sam gave the two jocks one last death glare, but let her partners lead her off.

* * *

“This is insane,” Danny said as he, Sam, and Tucker stood in the school’s front doors, staring out at the crowd that had gathered around the truck Ember McClain had arrived on for an impromptu performance. “It looks like the entire school’s out here.”

He walked out and his breath misted in front of him. He glanced over to see his partners’ ghost senses going off as well. “Uh-oh.”

The trio looked around, but their eyes quickly locked onto Mr. Lancer, who was standing atop a fire hydrant with a megaphone to yell at the rocker.

“Attention, freakishly dressed teen idol! I order you to cease and desist!”

“Desist this, grandpa!” Ember yelled, fiddling with her guitar. She strummed it and a purple energy wave washed over the crowd.

The crowd turned to Lancer, eyes glowing red.

“Pride and Prejudice!”

“Ember’s the ghost? Oh my gosh!” Danny gasped.

“Another blow against mainstream media,” Sam said and the three transformed.

They took off, Danny saving Lancer from the horde and Sam and Tucker shooting towards the rocker.

It was rather easy to get her and her band into a thermos, especially when one of them could shut down her guitar and speakers with a wave of his hand and the other could wrap her in plants when she tried to teleport away.

* * *

**{Teacher of the Year}**

“Why were we up so late last night? We were playing Doomed. We were trying to beat… WE’RE CHAOS! HOW COULD WE HIDE THAT FROM US?”

* * *

Tucker’s eyes widened as he realized the noob he’d been helping play Doomed was Technus. “Oh, man, I could have been using my powers to cheat! Why didn’t I think of that?” He grabbed his phone and called Sam. “Sam! Did you realize I could be the ultimate cheat code?”

_“Obviously. I’m surprised it took you this long to figure it out. What happened? Did you get pwned again? Wasn’t me this time.”_

“No, Technus showed up in Doomed.”

_“What? Where are you? I’ll meet you there!”_

“Level three. Should we call Danny?”

_“No, just let him study. Between my grab bag of secret power-ups and your ultimate cheat code, we’ll be fine. He needs to make up that test if we don’t want his parents to come sniffing around.”_

“I still don’t get it,” Tucker said as he waited for Sam to reach his character. “Danny’s had straight A’s for _years._ Why would his parents be mad about one F? It’ll only take him down to a C at worst. My parents are just glad that I’m not failing.”

 _“The curse of being a family of geniuses I guess. All I know is that if I have to hear him complain about his grades_ almost _falling to a B one more time, I'm decking him.”_


	5. Episode 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny and Sam's spooky haunted house.
> 
> That's actually haunted!

**{Fright Night}**

“So a trio of ghosts need to create a haunted house room,” Danny said, smirking at his partners as he dropped down on his bed.

“Think we could just stick Audrey II in there and call it a day?” Tucker asked and sat backwards on the desk chair.

Sam shrugged and sat next to Danny so she could put his head in her lap. “If I stopped pruning her, she should be big enough to give someone a scare by then. I don’t think just one thing will cut it though.”

“We could bring in some more plants for you to move around and have it be a haunted jungle,” Tucker said.

“Oh, so Danny makes a stupid bet and I have to do all the work.”

“Hey, I’m the one who gave Twoey sentience and unless you force her with your powers, she only listens to me. I think that counts for something,” Danny pointed out.

“You know, what is it with you and the non-sapient ghosts and ecto-beings?” Tucker asked. “Twoey, Cujo, those will-o'-wisp blob things that follow you around when we’re in the zone. You’d think Sam would be the one they're attracted to with her nature thing.”

Danny hummed and pressed into Sam’s hand so she’d start carding her fingers through his hair. “Well, like I said, I brought Twoey to life, so maybe she imprinted on me. And Cujo might just be able to sense that you guys hate dogs.”

“We don’t hate dogs. They're just loud and annoying,” Sam said.

“And Cujo is literally as demonic as his namesake,” Tucker added.

“He’s a good boy and this is why he doesn’t like you.”

“He trashed a lab for a toy!” Tucker said.

“And they put him down. Fair's fair.”

“Can’t disagree with you there,” Sam said with narrowed eyes. She’d launched quite the internet scandal when she’d dug up why, exactly, the old kennels she’d found the toy in were abandoned. “Back to the matter at hand though, you still haven’t explained the blobs.”

Danny blushed. “I, uh, might feed them chips sometimes when they show up while I’m cleaning the lab.”

There was a moment of silence before both his partners started snickering.

“Don’t feed the wildlife, Danny,” Sam said mockingly.

“All this time, they’ve been the ghost equivalent of pigeons.”

“Not pigeons! They're actually really sweet. Like… hummingbirds!”

“Sure, dude.”

“Whatever you say, Danny.”

“Can we just get back on topic? Sam, you’re goth, shouldn’t that make you our resident creepy person. What would go good with a living jungle and a literal man-eating plant?”

Sam patted his cheek condescendingly, but leaned back to plot. “I had something else planned, but if you guys insist on the jungle idea…”

* * *

“This has to beat whatever Dash has,” Danny said as the trio looked over the room.

Audrey II’s pot had been attached to the ceiling so her stalks could hang down, dripping -- thankfully only harmful to ectoplasm -- acid. Once the haunted house was open, she’d been instructed to snap at anyone who came near. She luckily didn’t like the taste of humans so there wasn’t any worry about her going overboard.

Sam had brought in some crawling vines and tropical plants to cover the walls and floor so she could have them tug at or trip people as they moved through the room and make it harder for people to find their way through.

Danny’s herd of blobs were drifting around the makeshift jungle, making soft lights flicker through the semi-darkness.

Tucker had set up electric field generators to give the room an eerie feeling.

The pièce de résistance, however…

“Did you get _it_ set up?” Sam asked.

“Try it out,” Danny said.

The boys watched as she walked over to an archway on one side of the room. She walked through it, only to come out an archway on the opposite side a second later.

“Yes!” Tucker cheered, high-fiving Danny. “Thank you, Space Fold!”

Sam tested out all the other archways to be sure they had a similar effect then came over to join the boys. “Congratulations, you’ve built a cartoon hallway.”

“You’re just mad you didn’t think of it,” Danny said and she ruffled his hair.

“Well, my work here is done. Now if you’ll excuse me,” Tucker grabbed the empty pumpkin-shaped candy bucket waiting by the door, “I’m a little late to start scamming some free candy.”

* * *

Danny flinched when Sam pinched him for squirming.

“I’m almost done, you big baby.”

“Sorry if I’m a little creeped out by you sticking sharp things very close to my eyes.”

“Just be glad you don’t need contacts. There, perfect.”

Danny smiled when Sam held up a mirror. His hair was covered by a long, braided black wig that a crown of thorns sat atop. His face had been given a slight green tint while his lips were a deep forest. His smile showed off fangs that were just as long and sharp as their ghost form’s and prosthetic ears gave him the same points. Dark makeup made his eyes look sunken, which highlighted his eyes when he let the red of his ghost form glow through. His hands had been given claw-like fake nails before being dipped into blood-red paint while he’d been dressed in black and dark green princely clothes. It all came together to make him look like a ghastly elfin prince.

He stood up and turned to Sam. “Thanks, Sam. This is great.”

She frowned and shook her head. “No, more brooding.”

“I really don-”

She pointed a finger in his face. “You wanted my help. This is me helping. More brooding. Imagine all the light draining from your soul.”

Danny pushed her hand away. “You’re just using this as an excuse to make me goth for a night.”

“Only for a night, but yeah. It’s a good look on you. Now brood or I’ll leave and you can do without my plants.”

Danny rolled his eyes, then tried to channel his angstiest self.

Christmas Danny.

Sam blinked at his scowl. “Wow, I didn’t think you could even get that dark. You’re usually our resident prep.”

Jingle Bells. Gingerbread. SANTA.

Danny shoved it all down, but the scowl only lessened slightly. “That’s because your family always goes away for the holidays.”

Sam looked confused, but didn’t get a chance to ask before they heard footsteps approaching. She transformed, saying, “Showtime. Maybe lose the anger a little.”

“I’ll try.”

She disappeared and all the plants except Audrey II started to sway and glow slightly. They seemed to thicken, making it impossible to see more than a few feet into the room.

Danny shooed the flytrap’s stalks up towards the roof. “Alright, Twoey, just like we practiced. Remember, be a good girl and you get a nice big bottle of ectoplasm as a treat.”

One of the lobes nuzzled him then they all retreated into the darkness Tucker had carefully maneuvered the lights to create on the ceiling.

“This is why she likes us. We spoil her,” a voice whispered in his ear.

“I don’t… I only spoil her a little.”

Sam chuckled and he felt her drift off.

“Mr. Fenton, it’s time,” William Lancer said as he arrived at the door to the room Daniel had taken. It was painted with toxic green glowing runes and vines as well as the words, _The Kingdom of Thorns._

The door creaked open slowly to reveal Daniel standing a few feet away.

 _Automatic door, nice touch,_ William noted. The boy was also in a more elaborate costume than Dashiell’s. His contacts were actually a bit disconcerting with how the light made them appear to glow. It wasn’t helped either that the normally cheerful, if downtrodden, boy had on a scowl that looked rather resentful and fell.

The boy gave a graceful bow. In an empty voice, he announced, “Welcome. May your stay be eternal.”

A shiver went up William’s spine. The boy’s voice sounded off. Echoey-perhaps, except it didn’t sound like Daniel’s voice echoing back. More like multiple someones were whispering his words alongside him. Some sort of speaker setup, maybe? But the teacher swore the voices were coming from Daniel.

Pushing down the emotions, William pointed to the door. “I hope that’s not permanent.”

“What?” The eerie expression and voice were gone in a blink. “Oh, yes. I mean no, it’s not permanent. It’s just a little ectoplasm from my parent’s lab. I have the dissolving agent.”

That… was not as comforting as Daniel seemed to think it should be. “Is that safe?”

“Yeah, sure. Pure ectoplasm is harmless to humans in small doses. You could eat the amount on there and still be perfectly fine. It’s the charged stuff that’s dangerous.”

Still not as comforting as the boy’s smile made it out to be. “Right. Shall we begin?”

Daniel gave a toothy -- fangy? -- grin and stepped to the side, gesturing William forward.

The door slammed closed once the teacher started walking, not close enough to hit, but enough that he could feel the breeze of it passing on the back of his neck. He glanced back and was surprised to see vines covering the door. He made note of it.

“You’re free to roam, but I would stick to the path,” Daniel said as William passed him, his show voice back on and just as creepy as the first time. “And I wouldn’t recommend eating anything. Or being eaten.”

William glanced back, only to see the boy was gone. But he had just heard him right behind him.

He shook his head and continued forward.

So far the room itself didn’t look particularly scary. It mostly looked like a poorly lit and abandoned greenhouse without the glass walls and ceiling. Though there was the odd lights flying about, like fireflies the size of softballs. The plants almost seemed to be moving as well, like in the wind though William couldn’t feel anything, and he swore they were glowing a bit. Some sort of paint?

“You didn’t put anything harmful on these plants, right?”

“Of course not,” whispered something in his ear and he jerked away. He looked around, but couldn’t see anything.

“No, they’re Sam’s. She’d kill me if I hurt her plants,” came Daniel’s normal voice from somewhere across the room.

“G-Good.”

“Are you alright, Mr. Lancer? You’re not lost are you?”

“No, Mr. Fenton.” He shook himself. He must have been hearing things. He took a step forward and immediately felt like he’d stepped into something, or through something. He rubbed his arms as goosebumps began to crawl up them. He made a note and quickly moved on.

After a few moments more of the random goosebumps and the feeling of vines or leaves brushing him despite being sure he wasn’t getting close to any of the plants, he reached an archway. The teacher frowned and he pulled aside the curtain to look in. He swore the passage was supposed to lead directly into the next room, but instead he found a short hallway. It appeared to be a pitch-black void littered in stars that went on forever, but directly ahead, perhaps two feet in, was another doorway with a curtain. Some sort of mirror trick?

He made another note and walked carefully through the hall. Perhaps it was the star pattern, but he almost felt weightless as he passed through. He pulled the curtain aside… and found himself in the room he’d started in? But that was impossible! And yet, the windows were on the archway’s left, just as they had been for the arch he’d come from. The chandelier hanging above, original to the house though Daniel had wrapped it in vines, was also the same one that had been in the previous room. He must have curved around, except he was sure he’d gone in a straight line.

“Something wrong, Mr. Lancer?”

The teacher jumped and spun around to find Daniel standing right next to him, staring up at him through half-lidded eyes. His head was tilted almost unnaturally to the side and he was giving his usual smile, though the sharp fangs made it feel like he was baring his teeth instead. Some of the flying lights were perched on his crown, but their shapes were indistinct which made it appear the crown was alight with swirling green flames.

“Just-just taking in your creativity, Mr. Fenton. I wish you would put such effort into your schoolwork.”

His grin grew and his eyes glowed brighter. “What can I say, I guess I have an affinity for all things ghostly and dead.” He turned on his heel and disappeared into the foliage. “I’ll leave you to it.”

If William was shaking as he moved through the room, there was no one around to tell. He kept a careful eye out, but even still it felt like more plants were brushing against him and he was in a constant state of goosebumps. Then, just as he reached the center of the room, a hand grabbed his shoulder.

He shrieked and spun around, dropping his clipboard in the process. There was no one there. He looked all around him, but couldn’t find any sign of a person.

Something creaked above him.

He slowly looked up and saw _something_ moving in the shadows, multiple long necks and wide heads with gaping maws.

“Mr. Lancer?”

“The Iliad and the Odyssey!” William shouted, looking down to see Daniel standing right in front of him, looking worried.

Aside from his glowing crown, none of his showman’s grace was on him anymore. Not even in his voice as he glanced down and said, “Oh, you dropped your stuff.”

William’s eyes widened as he spotted the three long stalks that had lowered down from the ceiling, each carrying the _heads_ of a horror-movie approximation of a venus flytrap. The flat lobes were all around a foot long and would have looked normal, if not huge, except for the toxic green acid dripping from their centers.

At the same time that Daniel leaned down, one of them shot forward to strike like a snake, its _jaws_ closing around the space his head had been not a moment before. They all darted back to the ceiling as Daniel stood up, appearing his normal awkward and helpful self.

He held out William’s pen and clipboard. “Here you go.”

The teacher’s hands were shaking as he took his things from his student.

Daniel rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry, I guess we might have gone a little overboard. Was it the halls? I can take those out.”

Something grabbed William’s ankle. “No! No, it was wonderful. Leave it as is. I just remembered I have somewhere to be.”

“So… does that mean…”

“Yes, Mr. Fenton. You win. Now how do I get out of here?”

Daniel pointed to the side.

There was a straight path to the door that most definitely had not been there before.

William shook the vine off his leg and walked quickly out of the open door.

Danny threw his hands up and cheered as soon as the door shut behind Lancer. He turned and gave Sam a high-five. “That was great! He didn’t even stay long enough to see Twoey in action.”

“We’re an oblivious idiot,” she said as she turned visible.

“What do you mean?”

She plucked off one of the blob ghosts nuzzling his head and shook her own. “Nevermind. Come on, we’ve got a few new ideas from that test run.”

“Cool.”

“By the way, that line about eating ectoplasm. We haven’t actually done that, right?”

“Well, not on purpose, but you’ve seen my house. Sometimes a bit of ectoplasm ends up in the food.”

“We’re never eating at our house again.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I never let you guys stay for dinner when my parents or I cook and Jazz sterilizes everything so she never gets ectoplasm in anything.”

“Never again.”

“And besides, we’re ghosts now. Ghost food is made of ecto-”

Sam put her hand over his mouth. “Never.”

He nodded. Once she’d removed her hand and floated off, he muttered, “It’s not even bad as long as the food doesn’t come to life. Just kind of citrusy.”

“We’re going to throw up!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AuthorLoremIpsum wrote a story based on this one that's linked at the end. It's written in script format, which I know can throw people off, but if you can push passed that I do recommend it. It's a sweet little story with some nice trio fluff.


	6. Episodes 14-15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny and Jazz have some sibling bonding and the trio deals with an invasion

**{13}**

“He had a living shadow,” Sam was explaining as the trio made their way through the fairgrounds. “It was pretty cool, until the stupid thing managed to release the ghost snake and I had to spend another hour chasing it down. Though, it would have been a lot easier if I wasn’t alone.”

“Sorry Sam,” Danny said, leaning into her side. “Apparently, Dad put in a fingerprint scanner to lock the portal and wanted to show it off. I had to convince my dad to stop before he let the whole ghost zone out, not to mention try to figure out how to get you guys access.”

“How’d that go?” Tucker asked.

“Dad took forever to stop, but once he did it didn’t take long to add you guys. Jazz helped.”

“Really?” Sam said. “Why?”

Danny shrugged. “She’s been weirdly helpful since Spectra. She’s been helping keep mom and dad off my case and everything. Maybe she’s worried I’ll stop hanging out with her again?”

“Maybe.” Sam nudged Tucker. “So that’s why Danny couldn’t help. What’s your excuse for ditching me?”

“Mom asked her friend’s daughter to tutor me in history. I had to leave to meet her at the library then walk her home.”

“Did you flirt with her?” Danny asked.

“How bad was the turndown?” Sam added.

“You’re both terrible partners.”

Danny pulled away from Sam to cuddle up to Tucker, kissing his cheek. “You know we’re just teasing.”

Tucker wrapped his arm around Danny with a glare. “You’re too adorable for your own good.”

Danny’s nose scrunched up. “I’m not adorable.”

“You are. It’s not fair when you use it against us,” Sam said.

“I’m not adorable. And I don’t use it against you.”

“Not on purpose,” Sam agreed with a smirk. “You’re too oblivious for that.”

Danny rolled his eyes and pulled away. His eyes caught on where his sister was waiting for him by an art stall and he smiled. “Alright, I’ll catch up with you guys later. Jazz!”

“Hey Danny,” she greeted. She stared at a painting of a clown as he ran up to her. “What does this say to you?”

“It says _My name’s Joe._ Why? What does it say to you?”

“I’m serious,” she huffed.

“So am I.” He laughed and ducked away when she tried to mess with his hair. “Come on, I want to kick your butt at Ring Toss.”

“You’re on, little brother!”

Jazz ended up winning at Ring Toss, but Danny beat her at darts. The two were heading towards the Skee-Ball booth for a tiebreaker when screams sounded overhead. They looked up to see the roller coaster train had jumped the tracks. Danny spotted Sam and Tucker carrying the train’s passengers to safety, but the train was heading straight for the siblings.

Danny grabbed his sister. He was about to use his intangibility, secret or no, but then suddenly they were next to a booth and the train smashed to the ground ten yards away.

The siblings gaped at the crash, then turned to each other.

Danny started panicking, sure that he had just done… _something_ to get them out of the way.

Jazz gave a shaky laugh. “Wow, that was crazy. I was sure it was headed for us for a second there. Guess fear really does mess with your head.”

“Y-yeah.” She didn’t notice! Danny didn’t know how she didn’t notice, but he wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth. “You okay?”

“Yeah. You?”

He nodded and looked back to the train as his ghost sense went off. _What just happened?_

 _That stupid shadow ghost is back!_ Sam said.

“Are you alright?” Danny and Jazz turned as a guy on a motorcycle came up to them. He smiled at Jazz and looked her over. “That looked close.”

“We’re okay,” Danny said, then frowned when the guy gave him a quick annoyed look before focusing back on Jazz.

“I think you dropped this.” The guy handed Jazz the stuffed owl Danny had won her -- Jazz had won a teddy bear covered in stars for Danny -- with a smile and wink. “The name’s Johnny.”

Danny blinked. Was he… flirting with Jazz?

Gross.

“Thanks. I’m Jasmine. Jazz.”

Danny smirked and leaned towards her. “Should I give you two some privacy?”

She elbowed him.

“I’m glad you’re okay. You look cold though.” The guy pulled a scarf out of his jacket and held it out. “Here.”

Danny shivered and felt Jazz do the same. He looked around with a frown as she said, “I couldn’t.”

“It’s fine, take it.” He smiled as Jazz hesitated, then took it from him. “I bet you’ll look great in it, Kitten.”

“My name’s not Kitten,” Jazz said as she put it on. Then her smile widened. “But you can call me that, if you want.”

Wait, was Jazz flirting _back?_

Double gross.

“Ride home, kitten?”

Jazz gasped and moved to climb onto the bike.

Danny caught her arm. “What are you doing? You don’t even know this guy.”

She yanked her arm away with a glare. “Lay off. I can handle myself.”

“What about us-time?”

“I want to go home. I know you can get home on your own.”

“Ja-”

“Bye, Danny,” she snapped, climbing onto the bike and putting on the helmet.

“Bye,” he said as the bike took off. “Wow, and I thought _I_ was an idiot with my crushes… I shouldn’t follow her… She will definitely kick my butt if she finds out…”

Danny transformed and followed the bike invisibly.

Thankfully Johnny did take her home, if on a bit of a circuitous path. She seemed happy about it though so Danny couldn’t hold it against the guy.

He left them at the door and headed to the lab. He couldn’t go to his room without raising questions, so he figured he might as well clean up the lab then head into the zone and check on Cujo and the blobs.

He had just put away the last beaker when someone opened the door to the lab. He quickly changed back as Jazz and Johnny came down the stairs, his sister wearing a red leather jacket he’d never seen before.

“Danny? What are you doing down here?”

“Oh, uh, hey Jazz! Just, uh, doing my chores. Yeah. Nice jacket.”

She smiled and turned to her date. “Johnny gave it to me.”

Okay, a scarf was one thing, but a jacket? “Right. What are you doing down here?”

“Looking for some privacy. So scram,” Johnny said.

Danny was slightly surprised -- and hurt -- Jazz didn’t react to his rudeness, but pushed it down. Instead, he gave her an incredulous look. “You wanted a secret place to make out and you brought him here. To our parents' lab. Where they spend almost all their waking hours.”

Jazz frowned and looked around, confused.

“Don’t you have better things to do than bug us, kid?”

Danny ignored the older boy and set his hand on Jazz’s shoulder. “Seriously, do you want mom and dad to walk in on you? I thought you were smarter than that. Take him up to the Ops Center, at least.”

She pulled away from him, but his hand caught on the scarf, causing both to slip down her shoulder. Both began to glow green.

Before Danny could react, Johnny grabbed him and yanked him away. “You know what, punk? We’ve had just about enough of you.”

Sam had mentioned a biker ghost was controlling the shadow. Danny’s ghost sense had gone off just before Johnny had ridden up.

 _I’m an idiot,_ Danny thought. “You’re a ghost!”

“Scared?” Johnny chuckled, aura flaring up.

Danny closed his eyes to hide the flash of red as he reached into his Space Fold behind his back and pulled out the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick. He opened his eyes and smirked. “Dude, my parents are ghost hunters.”

Then he hit the ghost in the head with the ectoplasm saturated bat.

Johnny dropped him with a yelp, grabbing the side of his face. Then he shot Danny a deadly glare. “Shadow.”

The biker’s shadow lifted off the ground and growled at Danny.

A throat cleared and the three turned to see Jazz glaring at the ghosts, the Fenton Ghost Peeler wrapped around her. She aimed the gun at the shadow. “Hands off the little brother,” she said before blasting it.

It shrieked under the light, writhing as the darkness was peeled away to nothing.

“Oh, no! My Shadow! My Power!” Johnny shouted and froze when Jazz turned the gun on him.

“In you go, creep,” she said, gesturing to the portal with her head.

Smiling, Danny walked over and opened it, bat bouncing against his shoulder.

Johnny sent him a poisonous look. “This isn’t over, kid.”

Danny stuck his tongue out at him.

“And take your junk with you,” Jazz said, kicking the scarf and jacket.

Johnny grabbed them and left.

“Don’t come back soon,” Danny called as he closed the portal. He turned to Jazz as she disengaged the peeler. “That still looks weird.”

“Yeah.” She pulled him into a hug. “Thanks. Who knows what that ghost would have done to me if you hadn’t been here.”

“I just hit him with a bat. You’re the one that blasted the shadow.”

She pulled back to look at the bat. “I thought that was just an ordinary bat that mom slapped a sticker on. How’d it hurt him?”

“Oh, I, uh, soaked it in ectoplasm.” And by that, he meant he let a ghost dog slobber all over it and use it for fetch. “I’m just glad it was close enough for me to reach.”

“Sure.” She kissed the top of his head. “You’re the best little brother.”

“Ugh! Gross, Jazz!”

* * *

**{Public Enemies, Part 1}**

“I’m exhausted,” Danny moaned.

“What is going on in the zone? We’ve never needed all three of us out all night,” Sam said, leaning against Tucker.

“At least most of them are all low levels. They’re more annoying than anything,” he huffed. “I need a nap though.”

“- over to Principal Ishiyama, who's here to inform you of some exciting rules and restrictions,” the mayor was saying as the trio tuned back into the assembly.

“This is going to end badly,” Danny muttered.

“I swear if they make it harder for us to transform, I’m just going to leave them to the ghosts,” Tucker said and both his partners elbowed him. “Ow! I was just kidding!”

“Due to the continuing and escalating ghost threat,” the principal said as she came onstage, “here's the way we're going to limit your freedom: One, students are to have no contact with these spirits.”

“You heard her Sam, get off,” Tucker joked and tried to nudge the tired girl off his shoulder.

She jabbed him in the side, but otherwise didn’t move.

“Two, all students will be escorted directly to their homes after school. And three, by order of the Mayor's new security advisor, a nine o'clock curfew.”

“A curfew?” Sam hissed.

“An escort?” Tucker groaned.

“OK, who's the idiot security advisor that came up with those lame ideas?” Danny huffed and leaned into Tucker’s other side.

The door to the auditorium slammed open and Danny’s dad yelled into a megaphone, “Fear not, young ones! We're here to make sure this school is prepared for any ghost emergency!”

Danny whined and hid his face in Tucker’s neck.

“You must be cautious! At any time one of these ectoplasmic malefactors -- Hi, sweetie! -- could appear out of nowhere!”

Danny didn’t want to know if his mom had singled him out or Jazz. He really didn’t. “Time to sit in the back where nobody can notice us?”

“Time to sit in the back where nobody can notice us.”

The three sluggishly got up and slipped to the back of the auditorium, ignoring Danny’s parents as they went on and on about how terrible ghosts were.

Then their ghost senses went off.

“Oh no. You have got to be kidding me. Here? Now?” Danny asked as Sam grabbed both their arms and started dragging them towards the doors. The crowds were making it impossible to get out together, though. And then a werewolf ghost was grabbing them by their linked arms.

“Servi!” it growled before Danny’s mom blasted it away.

They tried to chase after the ghost when it fled, only to come face to face with Lancer as soon as they were out the door.

“Bridget Jones' diary, kids! Stop your screaming and get over there into the safe area!”

They all scowled, but allowed themselves to be shoved back towards their classmates.

* * *

“Our parents invited the A-listers over to be trainee ghost hunters,” the trio said as Danny met up with Sam and Tucker. He handed them each a thermos then they split up. “We’re surprised Paulina would risk her hair like that. We’re more surprised they’d want to spend time with our parents. They always make fun of them. We can’t wait to toss that blabbering hairball who started this back into the ghost zone. We don’t think it was blabber. We think it was Esperanto.”

Danny and Sam frowned as the information floated from Tucker to them.

“Do you think we could look up more of the language to figure out what he was saying? Or talk to our fellow nerds? We can try.”

* * *

The three ran towards the trees after the wolf ran past their lunch table. They froze when they saw Jazz hiding there.

“Danny, Sam, Tucker, hi. Are you hiding here?” Jazz pointed down, looking over the three. “I'll go hide over there.”

“That was weird,” Tucker said as she ran off.

“It is Jazz,” Sam pointed out.

“No time for that. Let’s go ghost.”

The three transformed and shot off towards the wolf.

“Walker,” they growled as Sam pointed at the ghost police following the wolf. Then they scattered to dodge a green blast. It shot past them and hit the guards, sucking them through a portal.

“Whoa! Portable ghost portal? Oh great. Can we get one of those? Too clunky.”

They continued the chase to see the remaining guard fire a gun that shot out ectoplasmic ropes to catch the wolf’s tail.

“He’s hurting him,” they said as the wolf was electrocuted. “We have to help. If Walker's goons are after him, he can't be all bad.”

Tucker flew past the goon, shutting down the gun with a wave of his hand and leaving his partners to fight him off as he intercepted the wolf. It glared at him and he held up his hands to show he wasn’t armed. “Friend. Uh, amiko?”

The wolf sniffed him then licked his cheek. “Ugh, why couldn’t the dog person deal with this. We’re the only one who can sort of understand him.”

“Alright nobody move!” Tucker turned to see Danny’s Dad standing in a bush, tangled Fenton Fisher in hand. The man frowned when he realized what was wrong and started tugging at the line. “As soon as I get this thing untangled, you two beasties are going down.”

“It’s okay, he’s not a threat,” they said quietly as Sam and Danny came closer, having run off Walker’s goon. “It’s our mom you have to worry about.”

“Vere?”

Danny spotted his mom in a tree, targeting the wolf, and all four quickly fled. They landed on a nearby building.

The wolf glanced between the trio and growled something in Esperanto, but they could only pick up something along the lines of _not_ and _one._

“You mean us? Yes, we’re not one.” They all transformed.

“Guess it’s a little more obvious with animal instincts,” Danny said.

“We need to find somewhere you can stay,” Sam said.

“Tuck, think you can do something about that collar?” Danny asked.

The wolf growled and Tucker held up his hands. “It’s okay, no touching is needed.” His eyes turned purple. “Wow, this is kind of complex. Okay, I think I’ve… Yes!”

The collar fell to the ground.

“Mi libera!” the wolf barked, hands going to his neck.

“Of course you’re free. You -” The wolf ran off. “You're welcome!”

"Follow him,” Danny said, grabbing two thermoses out of the fold and tossing them to Sam and Tucker. “I need to go get the spare thermos I hid in my locker. Mom stole my other one. It’s probably going to be another long night.”

They nodded and transformed. Sam and Tucker followed the wolf as Danny went back to the school. He’d just grabbed the thermos when he heard voices.


	7. Episode 15.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Walker's plan unfolds and the trio gets some unexpected help.

**{Public Enemies, Part 2}**

“Okay, listen up!” Dash’s voice said and Danny followed it to a science lab. He peeked inside to see a bunch of students and school faculty watching as Dash continued, “Is everybody clear with the plan?”

“Yes, yes, it should all go down tomorrow after the town meeting,” Paulina said.

“Meeting?” Danny transformed then stepped in. “What town meeting?”

The group all turned to him with frowns.

Suddenly the door slammed behind him and he turned to see Kwan glaring at him.

“I’ve seen this one hanging around the girl. They’re dating.”

“Girl? Dating?”

Dash grabbed him, then Dash was falling to the ground and a white ghost was holding him.

“Walker!” Danny said without thinking.

“Oh, you know me?” the warden asked, leaning closer with a smirk. “You might just be the most useful one yet.”

“Useful?” Danny looked over the ghost’s shoulder and blanched as he saw the horde smirking at him with glowing eyes. “Oh no, you do not want to overshadow me, trust me. The last guy who did that did not enjoy it anywhere near as much as he thought he would.”

“We’ll see about that,” Walker said and dove into him before he could react.

A presence, pushing, pressing, trying to force him out. Out. OUT! GET OUT!

Danny snapped back into reality to find himself kneeling on the ground. He looked up and was relieved to see it was Walker sitting in front of him instead of himself. “Ha! Poindexter is better at possession than you!”

“How?” the warden growled, looking up.

“Dude, my family’s been ghost hunters for centuries. You think we haven’t built up an immunity to possession?” he lied.

Although, he supposed it might not be a lie. They didn’t know for sure why possession didn’t work right on Danny since neither Sam nor Tucker had been overshadowed before. His dad had managed to throw off Vlad for a short time though so maybe there _was_ something in the Fenton genes.

Oh well, something to consider another time. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

Danny ducked under _Kwan’s_ grab and rushed out the door. He heard the overshadowed people take chase and let a little ghost strength and speed slip through. He glanced over his shoulder and grabbed a pistol out of the fold when he was sure no one was looking. _Kwan_ had said girl, so they thought Sam was Doppelgänger. The longer they thought that, the longer the trio could use it to their advantage.

Danny hissed as something slammed him into the lockers.

Though, if it came down to giving up the ghost or dying, Danny’d transform.

He shot _Lancer_ with the gun, knocking him out the window. He flinched as he took off running again, hoping his teacher couldn’t feel that.

“Gotta get away long enough to disappear.”

Ishiyama and Paulina dropped down in front of him and he fired on instinct. Paulina dodged, but the principal went flying.

“You can't get away from me!” the popular girl growled and Danny was hit by both her fist and the irony.

“Wow. I waited all of puberty for a girl to say that to me and now it's a complete bummer,” he groaned, rolling away from her grab and rubbing his jaw.

She snarled and made another grab, only for a blast of pink to throw her back.

Suddenly a hand was pulling Danny to his feet and dragging him down the hall. “Let’s go, before more of them come.”

Danny’s eyes widened as he realized Valerie had just come to his rescue. _Where was this helpful attitude when you were trying to blow me out of the sky last week?_

“Watch out!” Danny jerked them to a stop just in time to miss a grab from his history teacher, who flew past them and out a window as a result.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Thank you. I don’t think I would have lasted this long on my own,” he shot back as they both fired on the science teacher. “Nice gear, looks familiar,” he added as he saw the gun she was holding.

It was exactly the same as his, but with pink detailing.

“Nice aim. I didn’t think you were into this stuff,” she said as they ran down the stairs.

Danny shrugged and ducked a grab from Dash. “I’m not obsessed like my parents, but you can’t exactly live with them without knowing at least a little about how to fight a ghost.”

The two made it out of the school and Valerie summoned her board. “Get on. I can take you to your house.”

“Thanks, Valerie.” He climbed on and knelt down so he could watch their back.

The board jolted. “What? Who’s Valerie.”

 _Oops._ “I-I just meant…” He glanced up and sighed. “You do realize you don’t change your voice at all in the suit, right?”

She cursed and dove around a cheerleader Danny didn’t recognize.

“It’s fine, I won’t tell anyone. I mean, Sam and Tucker already know, but they won’t tell anyone either. Promise.”

“Thanks.”

“You wouldn’t mind telling me where you got all this stuff, would you? Some of it looks like Fenton tech,” Danny said, shooting Dash out of the sky.

“It’s not stolen.”

“Didn’t say it was. My parents do sell their stuff. I just didn’t think anyone in town bought it before today.”

“I have a benefactor. They’re worried about the ghosts.”

“I mean entirely no offense given the circumstances, but they thought a teenager was the person for the job?”

“I didn’t ask, for obvious reasons.”

“That’s fair.”

“What were you doing in the school anyways? I thought everyone had evacuated.”

“I did too. That’s why I thought it was safe to go grab something I’d forgotten in my locker.”

“Clearly you were wrong.”

“Clearly,” Danny snorted and used a lull in attacks to pull out his phone. He texted Jazz, telling her to turn on the ghost shield. “The ghosts were using the school as a gathering point. Apparently they’re planning to do something at a town meeting tomorrow. I overheard them plotting, hence the trying to kill me thing.”

“Noted. I bet that ghost kid is part of this.”

“You mean Doppelgänger?”

“Doppelgänger?”

“White hair, green skin, androgynous?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, that’s Doppelgänger. They’re the one the ghosts are after. Not sure how they think trashing the town and overshadowing half the school is supposed to help.”

“Why are they looking for him?”

“Them. Androgynous, remember.” The trio had decided to just use gender-neutral pronouns for all their sakes. “And no clue.”

Valerie turned a corner, then slowed down at the sight of the shield.

“It’s fine, it will only stop ghosts.”

She nodded and flew through.

Once they landed, Danny turned to her with a smile. “Thanks again.”

He couldn’t see her face through the mask, but he could hear a smile in her voice. “No problem. Try to be more careful.”

“You too. And hey, if you need any help with your gear, just ask. I know my way around quite a bit of it thanks to my parents.” It’d also give him and his partners an idea of her arsenal.

“I might take you up on that. You’re… not so bad, Fenton.”

He smirked. “You’re not so bad yourself, Gray.”

She shook her head with a laugh. “You could use some work on your form. If-if you want, we can train together sometime. I have a black belt, so I could teach you a few things. I mean, unless you think your girlfriend would object. I don’t want to cause trouble.”

Danny groaned. “Sam and I are queerplatonic. Same with Tucker. No romance involved.”

“Oh, cool.”

Danny blinked. Did she sound… happier?

“So, training?”

“Uh, sure.” It would make Jazz stop bugging him about spending more time away from his partners. And he’d get to see what Valerie was capable of while learning new fighting techniques. “I mean, yeah, that sounds great. Thanks, Valerie.”

They swapped phone numbers and agreed to meet up Sunday afternoon as long as the ghosts didn’t cause a problem.

“Why did you want the ghost shield on?” Jazz asked when he came in.

“Ghosts were chasing me.”

“You okay?” Jazz said, looking him over.

“Fine. I need to call Sam and Tucker.”

* * *

“Ghost kid!”

The trio froze and turned as Valerie flew towards them. Sam and Tucker got into defensive positions, but Danny tugged them back. “What do you want? You here to blame us too?”

“For once, no. I know the mayor’s overshadowed. I ran into a pack of overshadowed people last night saving someone so I was looking for the signs. I also found out they’re here for you. So spill. What’d you do to tick them all off?”

Danny scrunched down slightly as his partners went through his memories of the night before. He hadn’t actually told them about his meetup with Valerie.

 _We’re talking about this later._ “Their leader, Walker, runs a jail in the Ghost Zone.”

“Are you a fugitive?” Her hand twitched towards her gun.

“Only because anything and everything is illegal in Walker’s book. The zone’s laws only apply lair to lair from what we’ve been told. Walker just likes to enforce his own laws on the entirety of the zone because all he cares about is locking people up. He’s a menace. We were locked up for duplicating. That’s pretty much our _thing!_ And we were in someone’s private lair. He literally wrote a rule against duplication into his book right in front of us as we were being arrested for it! He didn’t have any right to lock us up! So yeah, we broke out. Now he’s turning the town against us as punishment or something.”

She looked between them.

“Look,” they said as Danny floated closer, hands up in a sign of goodwill. “You don’t have to believe us, but will you at least help us free the people they’ve overshadowed and get them back to the zone.”

“Fine. I’ll agree to a truce, for now.” She crossed her arms and looked them over again. “You know, the talking together thing is really creepy.”

They shrugged. “We can’t help it. We’ve tried.”

“Do you have to be split up?”

“We’re stronger this way, and there’s a lot of ghosts. Three’s better than one.”

“That’s true. So what’s your plan?”

“We can get the ghosts out of people by pulling them out or using a low energy blast.”

“You want to fire on random people and hope they’re overshadowed,” she deadpanned.

The three shared a look. “She’s got a point. It’s faster that way though and a blast like that wouldn’t hurt anyone. We’re trying to convince them we’re here to help. We don’t think they’d see it that way if we’re attacking people.” They turned back to Valerie. “We can get the ghosts out by pulling them out of people.”

She pointed between them. “Did you just have a fight with yourself?”

“Ever hear of talking aloud to work through a problem?” Danny elbowed Sam. “Can your suit detect people who are overshadowed? Human bodies block our ghost sense.”

“I don’t know. I can try when we get to the town hall.”

“Alright, so we’ll work on getting the ghosts out, and then you can knock them down. Agreed?”

“Fine. Just know, as soon as this is over I’m knocking you down too.”

They nodded and the four shot towards the town hall.

Danny grabbed Valerie and phased her through the ceiling so they could hover over the crowd invisibly.

“Order! Order!” the mayor was yelling and everyone quieted down. “All in favor of declaring martial law, and allowing the completely competent Jack Fenton to mobilize a massive ghost hunt, please say-”

“We… might be too young to vote, but we’re casting one anyway!” they said as Sam turned visible.

The crowd panicked.

“You people have to listen to us. We’re on your side.”

“You're not fooling anybody, ghost kid! You are going down!” Danny’s dad yelled, brandishing the still tangled fisher. “As soon as I untangle this thing!”

“I’ve got the mayor on my scanner, but I’m having problems scanning the crowd,” Valerie said.

“The Fentons?”

“No, they’re clean.”

“That’s bad.”

“Why?”

“Maddie Fenton’s a good shot.”

Sam dropped to the ground as Danny’s mom fired at her. A moment later the ghost girl was dragged through the floor.

The three followed to see the horde from before all standing over Sam, with the mayor leading the charge.

“Walker! I should've guessed you'd end up in the guy that makes the rules!”

“Shouldn't you be running?”

Sam looked up as Danny, Tucker, and Valerie turned visible. “Shouldn't you?”

Danny passed Valerie his thermos then the trio launched themselves at the ghosts. Knocking them free with punches and blasts while Valerie vacuumed them up.

Then Danny’s mom was there.

“I’ve got her,” Valerie said, tossing Tucker the thermos and intercepting the woman before she could blast one of the trio.

“Ghost!” she said, pointing the bazooka at her.

“Human,” Valerie countered, removing her glove to show her human skin. “A hunter, like you. Name’s… Red Huntress. The ghost kid’s working for me, for now. The mayor and a few others are overshadowed.”

“Ghosts can’t be trusted,” Maddie argued.

“I don’t trust them, but I’m willing to use them until we can solve the invasion.”

The woman hummed and looked to where the trio were freeing their classmates. “I don’t like it, but I see your point. You’re certain the mayor’s overshadowed?”

“Saw it for myself. He’s the leader and he’s got a grudge against Doppelgänger. The ghost kid. That’s why he was trying to get you and your husband to lead the charge against them specifically.”

Maddie nodded. “I don’t have anything on me to deal with possession.”

“Neither do I. That’s why I’m using them.”

Maddie considered her arsenal. “I’ll be back.”

She ran upstairs and grabbed Fenton Zapper. She was about to run back down when the mayor appeared, hauling the ghost kid with him.

“Let us go!”

“Not a chance.” He forced the kid’s arm around his shoulders then threw the front doors open. As Maddie ran closer, she heard him quietly say, “I’m making sure your prison is the town where you live.”

She aimed.

“Help. He-”

She fired and a large white ghost was knocked out of the mayor.

The ghost kid caught the mayor and lowered him to the ground carefully.

“You okay, Mayor Montez?” she asked as she ran up to their side.

“What happened?” he said, looking around.

“You were overshadowed by him,” she said, gesturing to the angry ghost floating in front of the town hall. She glanced at the ghost kid, who held up his -- her? -- hands and smiled awkwardly. “We’re just… going to go fight Walker now if that’s okay Mrs. Fenton.”

She glared at… them and turned to the white ghost, drawing the bazooka and firing.

“Or you can do that. That works too,” they said as the ghost disappeared into the mini-portal.

She turned back to find the ghost kid gone.

“Mrs. Fenton! Mrs. Fenton!” some reporters rushed up to her, waving cameras and microphones. “What just happened? Was the ghost kid really kidnapping the mayor?”

“Mayor Montez was possessed -- or overshadowed -- by a ghost attempting to frame the ghost kid for reasons we don’t yet know.”

She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Red Huntress leading out a group of people.

“They’re all free, but the ghost kid took off while my back was turned,” she said, voice annoyed.

Maddie nodded and turned back to the reporters. “It seems we were wrong to think the ghost kid was leading the invasion, but they're still dangerous and we don’t know why they are here.”

“He saved me!” one of the teens shouted, flipping her hair over her shoulder and beaming as the cameras turned to her. “He’s totally a hero!”

“Yeah, she was awesome!” a blonde teen in a letterman’s jacket said as an Asian teen nodded along behind him. “You should have seen her blasting the ghosts out of us!

"It was like something out of a superhero movie! Awesome!”

Maddie tried to interject, but a few more teens joined in and the reporters turned all their focus on interviewing the victims.

“This won’t end well,” Red Huntress huffed and jumped into the air so a hoverboard could form underneath her. “It was cool working with you, Mrs. Fenton.”

“You as well.”

Valerie only made it out of sight of the town hall before she was stopped. Her hand settled on her pistol, but didn’t draw it. “You’re an idiot for sticking around.”

The ghost kid shrugged and rubbed their neck. “We just wanted to thank you for giving us a chance. And to apologize for what happened with your dad. We really are sorry we couldn’t stop Cujo before he reached the lab.”

“I thought the dog wasn’t yours.”

“He isn’t, technically, but someone has to keep him out of trouble and clearly no one else is going to do it so we kind of took him in after what happened to your dad. He’s actually really sweet when he’s not upset about being put down and losing his favorite toy.”

“Sure,” she said sarcastically. “Look, this was a one-time thing, understand. I just needed your help. I still don’t trust you.”

“We’ll just have to change your mind then.” They gave her a salute then disappeared.

She could have followed them with a scanner, but she let them get away. This time.

* * *

Sam and Tucker were scowling when Danny met back up with them in Sam’s room. Head ducked, he landed and transformed. “So…”

“What were you thinking?” the two said.

“You know what I was thinking,” he sighed, dropping into a bat-shaped bean bag chair.

“She’s trying to kill us,” Sam growled.

“Exactly. If we can get her to realize we’re not the bad guys then that’s one less person after us.”

“It’s dangerous, dude,” Tucker said.

“I’ll be careful.”

“Uh-huh, sure.” Sam crossed her arms and stood over him. “Just remember you’re not the only one at risk here.”

“I know.” He stood up and hugged her. “Like I said, I’ll be careful.”


	8. Episode 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio's argument about Valerie comes to a head when she kisses Danny.

**{Lucky in Love, Part 1}**

A heatwave had hit Amity Park, which meant all the teens could be found in one place: Floody Waters.

“It’s way too hot,” Tucker said and winked at a guy that was passing. “Just like the people.”

“I don’t think it’s hot,” Sam said, choosing to ignore the second part.

“Are you kidding, I’m broiling,” Danny huffed, tugging at his swim binder.

Sam frowned at him, then took off her hat and put it on his head. “That better, baby?”

Danny gave her a look as he pushed the hat’s veil off his face. “I don’t know, are you sure you’re not going to catch on fire if you let the sun touch your skin.”

“Seriously, how are you not hot in this?” Tucker asked as he tugged at the edge of the black cloak she was wearing over her bathing suit.

She shrugged. “It’s just not hot. And I need to keep up the goth aesthetic.”

“Well far be it for me to mess with your aesthetic,” Danny chuckled and pulled the hat off to give back to her.

“If you’re overheating -”

“I’m fine, really.”

She gave him a look that said she didn’t completely believe him, but took the hat.

“Hey, Danny!”

Danny smiled and turned to Valerie as she walked up. “Hey, Val.”

She smiled back, then turned to Sam and Tucker with a pinched expression. “Foley. Manson.”

“Whatever,” Sam said, turning to face the front of the line they were waiting in.

Tucker followed her lead.

Danny frowned at them before focusing on Valerie. In a quiet voice, he asked, “Is your thermos working okay now?”

“Yeah, thanks for the help. I don’t know why it didn’t work before.”

“You got an older model, electricity-powered. The new ones are powered by ectoplasm. I don’t know how one of the old ones even got on the market.”

“I don’t either. I guess it’s a good thing I know you,” she said, setting her hand on his shoulder.

Sam snorted.

Danny sighed and let Sam and Tucker go ahead without him when the line moved up. “Sorry about them. They’re just protective.”

“It’s alright, I get it,” she said, squeezing his shoulder then letting it go. “Are we still on for tomorrow?”

“Of course. See you then.”

“See you.” Danny watched Valerie wander off then ran up to join his partners.

“Done flirting with disaster?” Sam asked.

“I’m not flirting, and she’s not that bad.”

“Tell that to our bruises.”

“We don’t have any bruises,” Danny huffed. “And I’m the one that usually fights her since I have the best chance at evading so I don’t see what your guys' problem is.”

“That’s exactly our problem,” Sam hissed, turning to him with yellow eyes. “She shoots at you every chance she gets and you’re still trying to cuddle up to her.”

“I’m not -”

“You are, even if you’re too clueless to see it. And _she’s_ definitely trying to cuddle up to _you!_ ”

Danny blushed. They weren’t… Valerie was just his sparring buddy. That’s it.

Their ghost senses went off.

Sam rolled her eyes. “I’ll go deal with it. Make sure clueless doesn’t get himself killed while I’m gone,” she told Tucker, shoving Danny towards him.

She had just gotten out of sight when the screaming started. Danny and Tucker looked over to see a dark shape hovering over the running crowd.

“It’s Johnny’s shadow,” Danny said. “We should find a place to hide in case Sam needs help.”

Tucker nodded and they jumped the railing, but ended up getting separated in the crowd. Danny ran for the bathrooms, only to be pushed out as soon as he slipped inside. He flushed as he realized he’d gone into the wrong one.

“Hello, ladies’ room!” Star said.

“I’d tell you to go to the men’s room, but I don’t think you qualify.”

Danny scowled at Paulina, one of the few classmates who went to elementary school with him. “That’s a low blow, even for you,” he muttered to her as he passed.

He was almost to the men’s room when he heard an unfamiliar scream in a familiar voice. He turned to see Shadow hovering over Valerie, glaring down at the huntress.

“Oh no you don’t.” He ran for the two, grabbing the Fenton Fisher out of his Space Fold. “Hey! Tall, dark, and formless, remember me?”

Shadow turned to him and roared.

Danny tossed the line like a lasso to bind its arms. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Growling, the ghost flew into the air.

“Danny!” Valerie yelled as he was pulled along for the ride.

Shadow shrunk down to slip free then swooped down to grab Danny out of his free fall. It brought them face to face.

“I swear, if your biker pal is flirting with my sister again…”

Shadow snarled and dove.

Danny looked down to see them heading towards the sharp points topping a wrought iron fence that bordered the edge of one of the pools. His eyes darted about until they locked onto the emergency drain for the pool.

“Come on, slick,” he said and cast the fisher’s line, catching it on the fence on the other side of the pool. “Let’s see how well you mix with water.”

Using a bit of ghost strength he pulled the line hard enough to send them into the pool. Danny swam out and climbed up to the lever. He glanced back to see Shadow melting in the pool. He pushed the lever, saying, “Enjoy your trip to the sewers! Oh, and if you see Monday’s meatloaf, say hi for me.”

Danny jumped over the railing and was immediately grabbed. “Danny, that was so amazing!”

“Thanks, Val. You okay?”

“I’m great, thanks to you,” she said, then kissed him.

Oh. Oh! Maybe Sam wasn’t completely wrong.

Danny pulled back and tried to say something, but whatever had been on his tongue was lost when he spotted Sam floating behind the huntress with glowing green hands.

The half-ghost vanished.

“That’s for saving me.”

Danny blushed and pushed Valerie so she was at arms’ length. “Val, I, uh, I’m flattered and I like you, but I don’t know if-if I like you _that way,_ you know.”

Valerie grabbed his hands and stepped closer. “Well, there’s only one way to know. Tomorrow, you and me.”

“We, uh, already had plans for tomorrow.”

“Those were plans, this is a date.” She kissed his cheek and walked away. “I’ll meet you at your house. Four o’clock.”

“Okay?” He watched her for a moment then buried his face in his hands. _Sam? Tucker?_

There was no response.

* * *

“For the record, she kissed me.”

…

“Come on, guys, you’re being ridiculous.”

Sam spun around and grabbed the front of his shirt. “You put yourself in danger! Put _our secret_ in danger!”

“I couldn’t just sit back and let Shadow hurt Val.”

“What if she had seen your eyes when you used your power? What then?”

Tucker set his hand on Sam’s shoulder and gave Danny a blank look. “Dude, that was really dangerous. You know our human forms are a lot less durable. You could have really been hurt.”

“I’m sorry, guys, but I didn’t have time to change and Shadow knows me. Human me. I thought I could distract him long enough for Sam to get there.”

“You did a wonderful job of it,” Sam snapped and the two turned to walk away.

Danny sighed and went to the water fountain. He pressed the handle, but nothing came out.

The pipes rattled and Danny’s ghost sense went off.

Shadow burst from the nozzle.

“Oh no.”

The ghost’s green eyes landed on him and it grabbed him, phasing him through the floor.

“Come on, I’m already in trouble for tussling with you once. Can’t you find someone else to kick your butt?”

It glared at Danny and its hands tightened. Then Danny was sinking into it.

“What the -- Let go!”

They came out in the boiler room, but Danny only caught a quick glance before his head slipped into the darkness. There was a moment of weightlessness, then light stung his eyes and he was falling.

Arms wrapped around him, knocking the breath out of him.

Danny coughed and looked up to see Sam floating in front of him. He looked up and gave Tucker a smile. “Thanks.”

They nodded and flew back up through the ceiling. Once they were back in the halls, Tucker set him down.

“Danny!”

The two growled and Sam disappeared.

Valeria ran up and pulled him into a hug. “Are you okay? I saw people running and screaming.”

“I’m okay. That shadow ghost showed up again, but Doppelgänger saved me.”

She turned to Tucker with a smile. “Thank you.”

Danny’s jaw dropped and Tucker flinched back before disappearing.

“Did… you just thank them? You hate Doppelgänger.”

She blinked, then gave him a flirty smile. “Well, if they saved you they can’t be all bad.”

“Really?” Danny asked, excited. Was Valerie really reconsidering her stance on Doppelgänger?

She hummed then kissed his cheek. “Sit with me at lunch?”

“S-sure.” It wasn’t like Sam and Tucker were talking to him anyway. Maybe he could finally get through to her.

Something moved in the corner of his eye, but when he turned there was nothing there.

Shrugging, he took Valerie’s hand and walked with her to the cafeteria.

* * *

“You seem happy,” Jazz said as Danny came into the house.

He sent her a smile as he passed her perch on the couch. “I am. Val’s meeting me here at four. I’m going to go toss my backpack in my room.”

“You’re not usually this happy about your sparring sessions with Valerie,” Jazz said, suspicious.

Danny froze. What could he even tell her? _Yeah, I’m thrilled because my friend is finally seeing that my ghost half isn’t an evil poltergeist out to ruin her life._

Jazz’s eyes widened. “Oh my gosh, are you going on a date?”

“What? No, of course not! Val and I are just friends!”

She smiled and turned back to her work. “Sure, little brother.”

“It’s not a date, Jazz,” he said, pushing aside the fact that Val wanted it to be a date.

“I won’t tell our parents, don’t worry.”

Danny marched up the stairs. He threw open his door, ready to spend the next ten minutes groaning into his pillow about how everyone in his life seemed to think he had a crush on Valerie, only to freeze at the sight of the ghost leaning against his desk.

“Where is she?” Johnny growled.

Danny glared at him and shut the door. “Like I told your shadow, you need to leave my sister alone.”

“I don’t care about your sister, punk. I want Kitty.”

“Who?”

“My girlfriend.”

He narrowed his eyes. “If you’re messing around with another girl’s head.”

“Calm down, punk. She’s a ghost. I only even went after your sister because Kitty got caught between here and the zone and needed a body.”

Danny opened the door. “JAZZ, GET TH-”

Johnny yanked him back and slapped a hand over his mouth.

“WHAT WAS THAT?”

The two teens shared glares then Danny shrugged the biker off. “NOTHING! NEVERMIND!”

There was a moment's pause, then Jazz gave the affirmative.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blast you all the way back to the zone?” Danny said, shutting the door.

“My girlfriend’s overshadowing yours.”

That was a very good reason. “Excuse me?”

Johnny pointed down at his shadow. “Shadow’s been tracking Kitty since she took off. He finally caught up to her right as she overshadowed your muscular girlfriend.”

“Valerie’s not my girlfriend!” Danny snapped.

“Sure, kid. That’s not what Shadow saw.”

Danny suddenly remembered the flicker of darkness he’d seen before lunch and rubbed a hand down his face.

Then he realized.

“Let me guess. Kitty overshadowed Val at the waterpark.”

“Yeah, right before you attacked Shadow.”

“In my defense, we didn’t exactly leave things on the best terms and I thought it -- he? -- was going to hurt Val.” So all the stuff about wanting to date him, the kiss, it was all Kitty. Which means Val wasn’t reconsidering her stance on Doppelgänger either. “And he’s the one who escalated from capture to kill.”

“Maybe if you learned to keep your nose out of other people’s business…”

“Uh, my sister. My friend. You and Kitty _made it_ my business. Speaking of which, why is your girlfriend trying to date me?”

“Hell if I know. She just stormed off out of nowhere. Girls, you know.”

Danny stared at him. “Dude, I’ve spent enough time in a girl’s head to know that whole stereotype of girls getting angry for no reason is bs.”

“You’ve spent time in a girl’s head?” Johnny asked incredulously.

“You’re a ghost. You shouldn’t be surprised by weird psychic nonsense that happens around here.”

“You’re human.”

“My bedroom is directly above a portal to another dimension, a nerd who died in the fifties haunts my school locker, and my partners aren’t talking to me right now because my sister’s ex’s girlfriend kissed me while overshadowing my friend who they don’t like because she hates the local ghost kid that half my school has a crush on. My life is weird.”

Johnny didn’t respond.

“Yeah, so what did you do to tick off Kitty?”

Johnny huffed and leaned against the desk again. “Nothing.”

“Sure. What were you doing when she took off?”

“Driving around the next town over, keeping out of the ghost kid’s reach.”

Danny narrowed his eyes. “And how’d you get there without tipping them off that you were here?”

Johnny smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“We’re coming back to that. So you were driving, that’s it. What were you doing while driving?”

“Just checking out the sights. Maybe had Shadow run off some guys when they tried to hit on Kitty. Snagged a ham when she phased us through a meat truck.”

“We’re coming back to the theft too,” Danny said and Johnny rolled his eyes. “Why’d she phase you through a meat truck? Is that a thing you guys do?”

“I didn’t see the truck ahead of us while we were on my bike.”

“And what distracted you?”

The older teen shrugged. “The girls in the car next to us were cute.”

Danny facepalmed. “You’re an idiot.”

“Watch it.”

“You nearly crashed your girlfriend into a truck because you wanted to ogle other girls and you can’t figure out why she’d be mad?”

“I didn’t mean nothing by it. She knows that,” Johnny snorted.

“Are you sure about that?”

“We’ve been together since before you were born.”

“You literally said you still get jealous, so why can’t she?”

Johnny scowled and crossed his arms.

“So what are you going to do to fix this?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. It’s your girlfriend,” Danny said, then shrugged. “I mean, I can do it, but my idea of fixing it is calling up Doppelgänger to have them rip your girlfriend out of Val so we can all kick both your butts, but I didn’t think you’d like that plan.”

“And how do you expect me to fix it?”

“Apologize. Get her candy and flowers. I don’t know. She’s your girlfriend. How do you guys usually make up after a fight?”

“We make out.”

“You guys need help.” Danny opened his door.

“Where are you going?”

Danny ignored him and went to the stairs. “Hey, Jazz.”

“What?”

“My friend’s girlfriend caught him checking out other girls and now she’s ticked.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, so how would he make it up to her?”

“She can do better.”

“Come on, Jazz,” Danny said, losing the fight against his smile as he heard Johnny grumble behind him.

Jazz sighed and put down whatever she was working on to look up at him. “First, he needs to apologize. And actually mean it. A gift couldn’t hurt, but it should accentuate the apology, not pick up it’s slack. It should be something specific to her, to show that he’s thinking of her. Not flowers or candy, that’s too general. Though he can get her favorite candy or flowers to go with the main gift. Get something that connects to her interests. Preferably something she’s mentioned wanting, to show he’s been listening. Maybe there’s a book she doesn’t have that she’s been talking about or a dress she’s been eyeing. But remember, the main thing is the apology. Telling her that he knows he messed up and he’s sorry and he’ll work on being better in the future because he doesn’t want to lose her. Clear communication is important, got it?”

Danny glances back at Johnny’s pinched face. “Yeah, thanks Jazz.”

“Any time, little brother.” She started to turn away, then stopped. “Also, your friend should know, she might not forgive him. Especially if this isn’t the first time he’s done this. He needs to respect that or it will only make things worse. Apologize, then step back and give her time to make her decision.”

“Right.”

Danny returned to his room with an annoyed Johnny.

“That plan sounds stupid. She even said it might not work,” he scoffed.

“Well if you don’t like Jazz’s plan, we can go with mine.” Johnny gave a growl that sounded more like Shadow. “So what is Kitty interested in?”

“Me.”

“Considering she’s trying to hook up with a random human boy right now, I don’t think that will work.”

“I wouldn’t call you random.”

“… Oh my god, did you complain about me to your girlfriend?” Danny laughed. “Is she trying to date me specifically to make you as jealous as possible? Well, now I feel used.”


	9. Episodes 16.5-18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny gets back his Kitty, Vlad is a creep as usual, and Valerie and Danny are paired up for a school project.

**{Lucky in Love, Part 2}**

Danny glanced over his shoulder as he led _Valerie_ through the park.

“What are you looking at?”

“I just… thought I heard something,” he lied, turning back to her. “How about we find a quiet place to sit?”

She smiled and leaned into him. “A quiet, _private_ place, huh?”

“Y-yeah.” _Johnny better hurry up._

As he led her towards an empty part of the park, Danny checked his phone. Still nothing from his partners. He really hoped this wouldn’t come to a fight. The last thing he needed after all this was Johnny or his girlfriend finding out he was half-ghost.

 _Guys, we really need to talk. Please answer,_ he texted them. After a moment, he started another text. _Come to the park, Joh-_

“What are you doing?”

Danny closed his phone without sending the text. “Just texting Sam and Tucker.”

She grabbed it from him and put it in her pocket. “Don’t think about them right now. You’re with me.”

“Right. Do you want to get some ice cream?”

She smiled and dragged him over to a tree, pinning him against it. “I think I’d like something a little sweeter.”

Danny turned his head and pressed his back against the tree. “I don’t think -”

She grabbed his chin and brought their faces together. “Don’t think then.”

The sound of a motorcycle washed over them and she pressed their lips together.

“Hey!”

Her response to Johnny’s shout was to press closer to Danny and try to force her tongue into his mouth. He pushed her off before she could and then Shadow was dragging her away.

“Get off me! Danny, help!”

He ignored her, turning to Johnny. “Took you long enough.”

Likewise, Johnny ignored him as Shadow dropped Valerie next to his bike. “Come on, Kitty. Quit wigging out and come back to me. I’ll be good.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, low life.” She turned to Danny and he held up his hands.

“Forget it, Kitty. Your boyfriend already sold you out.”

She pouted at him then glared at the biker. “Beat it, Johnny. I’m Danny’s girl now.”

“No one’s my girl,” he muttered, leaning back against the tree and crossing his arms.

“You know I love you, babycakes.” Johnny took her hand and knelt. He glanced at Danny with a pinched expression, but forced it off to smile up at Valerie. “And I’m sorry if I made you feel like you were anything but the only girl for me.”

She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t pull away.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a bouquet of blood-red glowing chrysanthemums and a box. Holding them up to her, he said, “We were made for each other, Kitty. There’s no other girl I’d want to spend the rest of my afterlife with.”

She took the box and opened it. Her eyes widened as she pulled out a familiar silver knife with an iridescent green blade.

Danny stood up straight, “Did you steal that from my parent’s lab?”

“It’s beautiful,” Kitty said, running her thumb along the dull edge.

“Just like you,” Johnny said and she smiled.

He stood up and they hugged. Then she grabbed the back of his head and shot him a look. “No more checking out other girls?”

“I’ll do my best.” He cupped her cheek. “Do you want to finish this conversation back home?”

Her eyes went half-lidded then Kitty was slipping out of her. Danny shot forward to catch Valerie before she could hit the ground as Kitty stuck the knife into her boot and took the flowers. Johnny and Kitty climbed onto the bike and Shadow slipped into his place beneath Johnny. The biker revved his bike and hit a button on the handlebars.

A portal opened in front of them.

“You can ride in and out of the Ghost Zone whenever you want now?”

Johnny smirked and winked. “Later, kid. Thanks for the help.”

Then they were gone.

“Note to self, track them down and kick his butt later.”

Valerie groaned in his arms and he looked down. “Danny?”

“Hey, Val. How are you feeling?”

“What happened?” She sat up and looked around. “What are we doing in the park?”

“You were overshadowed.”

“WHAT?” She leapt to her feet, reaching for her backpack, only to realize she wasn’t wearing it.

“It’s alright,” he said, climbing to his own feet. “They’re gone.”

“You-you got rid of them?” she said.

“Is that so hard to believe?” he chuckled, then shrugged. “I knew the ghost. Well, technically I know the ghost’s boyfriend. I managed to get him to get her out and take her back to the zone.”

She blinked, then smiled. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“Kind of. I’ve got no plans if you want to hear it.”

“Over dinner? I’m starving.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

* * *

Danny took a deep breath then walked towards where his partners were standing by Sam’s locker.

Tucker spotted him first and the two turned to him as he came to a stop a few feet away.

There was a moment of silence then they all said, “I’m sorry.”

They laughed.

“Really, I’m sorry. You guys were right, I shouldn’t have put myself in danger like that,” Danny said. “Especially since I risked your secrets too.”

“We’re sorry too.” Tucker threw an arm around the smaller boy. “We know better than anyone how protective you are of… well, everyone. We should have been more understanding.”

“You guys were just worried about me.”

“We were being overprotective,” Sam said. “And overly possessive. We should have trusted you more. Both with Shadow and with Valerie.”

“I was being reckless.”

Danny was shocked when she grabbed his shoulders and kissed his cheek. While his partners appreciated his kisses, they’d never returned the favor. He didn’t mind since they had their own ways of showing affection, but it was kind of nice being on the receiving end.

“You had to make a quick decision and you worked with what you had. We should have respected that more. You’re our _partner,_ Danny.”

Tucker wrapped his other arm around Sam and pulled them all together. “So Danny will try to be more careful from now on and we’ll try to be more understanding about the Valerie thing, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Yeah, agreed.”

They melted against each other for a moment before pulling away.

“So how’d it go with your new girlfriend anyways?” Tucker asked.

“For the last time, she’s not my girlfriend,” Danny said.

“You might think that, but she -”

“Was overshadowed by Johnny’s girlfriend,” Danny finished, crossing his arms, and his partners’ eyes widened.

“What?”

“His girlfriend, Kitty, overshadowed Valerie at the waterpark. That’s why his shadow attacked, he was trying to track her down.”

Tucker shook his head as Sam grabbed his shoulder and looked him over.

“When did you find this out? Why didn’t you call us?” she asked.

“I tried.”

They flinched.

“Oh, man.”

“Sorry, Danny.”

He shook his head. “It’s okay, guys. Nothing happened. Johnny came to me when he found out Kitty was hanging around me. Apparently he ticked her off so she was using me to make him jealous or something. I got him to apologize and they both went back to the zone.”

Tucker started snickering. Sam shot him a look, but that only made him start laughing for real.

“It’s not funny, Tucker.”

“Is… too,” he said between laughs and Danny felt his own lips twitching up.

“Danny?” The trio turned to see Valerie walking up hesitantly. “Am I interrupting? I can come back later.”

Sam’s face went blank and she marched up to the other girl.

Valerie’s face went blank as well and she stood firm.

“I still don’t trust you.” She glanced back at the boys and sighed. She held her hand out to Valerie. “But I’m willing to give you a chance, for Danny’s sake.”

Valerie’s eyes widened and darted to the blue-eyed boy before she took the hand. “For Danny.”

Tucker came over and draped his arm over Sam’s shoulders. He gave a smile the boys had learned from Sam. “Of course, if you prove us right and hurt Danny, no one will find your body.”

Valerie crossed her arms. “I would never hurt him.”

“Then we won’t have a problem,” Sam said with a matching smile.

* * *

**{Maternal Instinct}**

Sam tossed a ball of ectoplasm back and forth as she floated over her partners, who were both staring intently at spots across the lab from themselves.

“Are we done yet?”

They both ignored her.

A minute passed, then Danny disappeared in a swirl of red comets.

Only to reappear in another swirl a foot in front of where he had been standing.

Danny frowned and looked around.

“Did we even move? A little.”

Sam rolled over onto her stomach and let the ball dissipate.

“That was better than last time. But still nothing compared to when Ember or Vlad teleport. At least we’ve been able to do something.”

Tucker was still staring at his spot.

Sam rolled her eyes.

“As we’ve said, teleportation has to be a one of us thing. It fits the space theme. It’s not fair for it to be a one of us thing.”

Tucker pointed at himself, then Sam, then Danny.

“Technokinesis, chlorokinesis, and pocket dimension creation. One each. Maybe it’s two each and we just don’t know it yet.”

Tucker and Sam turned to Danny, who shrugged.

“We found out about teleportation by accident. Maybe we haven’t discovered all our powers. That makes sense. Good thing we have the whole weekend to -”

“Hey Danny!”

The trio quickly transformed, Sam dropping to the ground in a roll and popping up to her feet next to her partners as Danny’s mom slid into the lab.

“Pack your bags! We're going to a mother-son science symposium in Florida! Doesn't that sound fun?”

* * *

Sam looked up as Tucker floated through her wall.

“Animal ghosts? Animal ghosts!” they said and Tucker dropped onto her bed.

“There were seven of them this time,” he said after he transformed, voice muffled by her pillow. “Two got past me and Mr. Fenton saw them so now he and Jazz are going full ghost hunter. We might have to just leave them to it unless you want to risk getting hit.”

“We want to know where they’re coming from. And why they’re attacking the Fentons. Any word from us?”

“Nah. I tried calling him again on the way back, but it went straight to voicemail. Maybe his mom confiscated his phone for the trip.”

“Hope we’re at least having fun.”

“Doubtful.” Tucker looked up at her. “Unless NASA haaaaaa-Sam!”

“Yes?”

“Why do you have two heads?” he squeaked, glancing between the two heads sticking up from her shoulders.

“We tried to see if we could duplicate. Good news, we can. Bad news, we need practice… We also might be stuck.”

Tucker sat up, throwing his hands in the air. “First Danny can teleport, now you can duplicate! This is so unfair.”

“We might be able to duplicate.”

He shook his head. “I’ve tried. I got nothing. Just like for teleportation, pyrokinesis, shapeshifting, sonic attacks, and talking to animals.”

“We tried all that?”

“And none of it worked.”

She reached over to squeeze his shoulder. “Sorry. Maybe there’s something we haven’t thought of yet.”

He sighed and stood up. “Maybe. Let’s just get you fixed up before your mom finds you like that.”

“We almost wish she would.”

* * *

Tucker and Sam stared at their partner as he finished his story.

“Dude.”

“I know.”

“That’s it, you’re not allowed to take any more trips out of state without us,” Sam said, pulling him into a hug. “I’m going to feed that fruit loop to Audrey II.”

“I can’t believe he stole your powers then set his animals on you. What happened to making you his son?” Tucker asked.

“He still wants me to be his son. I don’t know how he thought sicking his ghosts on me would help.”

“That’s really messed up,” Tucker said. His fists clenched as he imagined Danny, running for his life through some forest in the middle of nowhere. No technology to help. No partners. Just alone and scared. All because of a man who claimed he wanted to be his father.

“Uh, Tucker, you might want to calm down.”

“Calm down? How can I calm down, Sam? The fruit loop did all that to Danny and we weren’t even there to help him! Aren’t you mad? How can you even ask me that?” he growled, glaring at her.

She raised an eyebrow. “Because I don’t want you to destroy Danny’s room.”

“What?”

Danny grabbed Tucker’s chin and turned his head so he could see the books, model rockets, and video games hovering a few inches off his bookshelf, a neon purple glow surrounding them.

Tucker blinked and they dropped back into place.

He turned back to his partners to see them smiling at him. “Did I do that?”

“Guess we figured out your power,” Danny chuckled and kissed his cheek.

“How did you not check telekinesis? That’s peak poltergeist right there,” Sam added, shaking her head.

* * *

**{Life Lessons, Part 1}**

“There they are, the prey that got away. I hope you've enjoyed your freedom, children, because Skulker has returned to finish the hunt,” Skulker muttered to himself as he watched the three halfas fly towards their school. All he needed was for them to split for just a moment, then he could pick them off one by one.

Suddenly a blast shot at the group and they scattered.

“What? A weapon was fired? By someone other than me?” He looked around and spotted a human flying towards the trinity on a hoverboard.

“Thought I'd forgot about you, ghost?”

“No, but we’d hoped you had.” The three shared a look then two darted off while the last went to engage the girl.

“They all seem formidable. Maybe I should hunt the girl,” Skulker mused as the halfa was knocked down by one of the human’s blasts. The halfa retaliated with a blast that knocked her off her board, the device having to swoop down to catch her on its own. “Of course, I have sworn a blood oath to have the ghost children’s pelts on my wall.”

“Look, we don't want to hurt you!” the halfa said, voice soft and pleading as they watched her regain her footing.

“What makes you think you can!” she shot back and pulled out a large blaster.

The halfa warped their body around the blast then fired at the gun, destroying it.

“I should force a contest between the hunter girl and one of the ghost children. And to the winner, the honor of me using their skull as a tetherball!” Skulker decided.

A bell rang out and both looked down at the school they were flying over.

“Later for you, punk!” the human announced and flew off.

“Yeah, bye Val,” the halfa sighed and flew off.

“That’s interesting,” Skulker hummed.

* * *

Valerie scowled down at her new _child_ as they left the class.

“You okay?” Danny asked and she sighed.

“Yes, it’s just… My grades are in the toilet and I really need to pass this class, but I just got a new job so I don’t know how I’m supposed to deal with this.”

“New job?”

“Yeah. It cuts into my hunting time, but I want to help my dad with the bills and save up for college.”

“I understand.” He took the flour sack from her. “You know, it is a partner assignment. I can take care of it if you’re busy.”

“I can’t ask that of you. We should be sharing the work evenly.”

He shrugged. “What are friends for? Besides, I’ve got Sam and Tucker if I need help. I can even come by after you’re done and drop it off if you want.”

“You sure,” she asked, frowning when the sack started to cry.

He frowned down at the sack unsurely, but nodded. “Yeah, it’s not like I have a job so it will be like you’re the working parent and I’m a stay at home dad.”

“You’re the best,” she said, hugging him. “I’ll let you know the moment I’m off then we can meet up.”

“Sounds like a plan.”


	10. Episode 18.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skulker captures Danny and Valerie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this has been a while. Hyperfixations are a B. I'm going to post what I have and hopefully, that will rekindle enough for me to finish this.

**{Life Lessons, Part 2}**

“Regretting your life choices yet?” Sam asked as Danny scowled down at the still crying sack of flour.

“I've been a parent all of one day and I’m probably already down to a C-.”

“Life could be worse. You could be that guy,” Sam said, pointing to where the Nasty Burger’s mascot was being terrorized by a bunch of kids.

“Oooh! Nasty Nat! Let's get a family photo with him.”

“You're taking this way too seriously,” Sam said as Tucker pushed her and Danny towards the mascot.

Sam glared off the kids while Tucker asked for a photo, which Danny took for them.

“You want me to take one of you? Family photos help boost your grade.”

“Not without Val here,” Danny said, passing Sam the camera and rocking his _still crying_ sack. “I don’t want to give Tetslaff the wrong idea.”

“The wrong idea being the fact Valerie stuck you with all the work?” Sam asked.

“We talked about it. She has a job, Sam.”

“So she says.” When Danny shot her a look, she said, “Right, sorry. Giving her a chance.”

Danny sighed and looked down at the sack. “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a dad.”

“Try supporting its top more.” Danny looked up at the muffled voice to see Nasty Nat standing near him. He gestured awkwardly at Danny’s arms.

Danny shifted his arms so its _head_ was held up by his elbow and it started to quiet down. “Wow, uh, thanks, dude.”

The mascot nodded and waddled off.

Just in time as the trio’s ghost senses went off.

“Beware!”

As one, they groaned and shouted, “Not it!”

“We should really learn that that’s not going to work anymore,” Tucker chuckled.

“I’ll go,” Sam sighed and headed towards the back of the restaurant. “You two can manage the sacks.”

“You sure you’re not sticking Tucker with all the work?”

She turned around to walk backward and pointed at Tucker. “That’d be a good burn if it wasn’t for the fact he actually likes this stupid assignment.”

Danny chuckled and rocked the baby, smiling as she finally quieted down.

Then the explosions started. They looked up to see Sam fighting Valerie.

“Oh no,” Danny said. “Tuck, can you watch the kid for me?”

“Only because I don’t want Sam to get killed. Go stop your baby mama.”

“Sam’s right, you are taking this too seriously,” Danny said, handing over his sack.

He started to run off, but an explosion in front of him threw him back.

“Danny!”

He looked up with wide eyes to see the Nasty Burger sign falling.

Valerie grabbed him and pulled him out of the way just as Sam swooped down to hide Tucker’s intangibility.

“You okay?” the ghost hunter asked.

“Yeah, maybe be a little more careful with the missiles next time,” he said, shifting so he could kneel on her board.

“Sorry. The ghost kid was in one of their slow moods so I wanted to try and take them out before they could pick up speed. Besides, I’m only on a five-minute break.” Val set down behind the Nasty Burger and Danny hopped down so she could fold up her board. She pulled down her mask and looked him over. “Where’s the baby?”

“Tucker has her. I was, uh, about to go to the bathroom so I asked him to watch her.”

“Alright. You sure you’re okay?”

He smiled and set his hand on her shoulder. “I’m fine, really.”

She smiled back.

“Valerie?”

“Oh crud, that’s my boss,” she whispered and retracted her suit.

He glanced at her uniform. “You work at the Nasty Burger?”

“Tell anyone and I end you,” she hissed as she stuffed her guns into her backpack.

“I won’t. But why the secrecy? What do you do?”

“None of your business,” she said, elbowing him playfully. She looked down at him as she stood up straight and there was mischief in her eyes. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Have fun with the kid, honey. I’m headed off to work.”

He rolled his eyes and opened his mouth.

“Well now, this is unexpected.”

The two spun around to see Skulker floating behind them, a gun charging. Neither could react before it fired.

* * *

Danny groaned and sat up. “What hit me?”

“That would be me.”

The half-ghost scowled and turned to see Skulker standing over him. His breath caught as he noticed the cage bars between him and Skulker. He looked around to see he was in a steel cage that was glowing dark blue. And he wasn’t alone.

“What’s with the cage? I thought you wanted our pelts. And why’s Valerie here?” Danny growled, getting to his feet and marching towards him.

“There’s been a change of plans. You should be grateful. I had planned to have one of you fight to the death with the huntress, but knowing she is your mate makes you far more appealing for my collection. The pelts of your other sides will have to do.”

Danny gaped at the hunter ghost. “Okay, first of all, no one is ever going to be grateful to be in a cage, you creep. Second, Val is my friend, none of us would have killed her. Third, please tell me you mean mate in the British sense, because if Johnny and Kitty have been telling people I’m dating Val I’m going to kick their butts. Forth, gross dude.”

Skulker just smirked at him. “You cannot hide your relationship from me, ghost child. I heard you speaking about your child with your mate.”

Danny hit his head on the bars. “We’re fifteen. We don’t have a kid. Our school just makes sophomores partner up to take care of a flour sack. Teach us responsibility and stuff. We were joking about the assignment because we got paired up. Val and I are just friends.”

Skulker eyed him for a moment, then frowned. “Really?”

“Yes!”

“Teenagers,” Skulker growled, running a hand over his face.

“Sorry to inconvenience you. Now if you could just let us go.”

Skulker snorted and turned to leave. “Welcome to your new home.”

Danny glared at his back and tried to push his hands through the bars.

“And before you get any ideas, that cage was made with you halfas in mind. No phasing through it for humans or ghosts.”

“You know Sam and Tucker are going to come to get us!” Danny yelled as the ghost moved out of sight.

Skulker didn’t respond.

“Stupid frog.” Danny turned to the bars and tried to summon the energy for an ectoblast, to no avail.

After trying and failing to use the rest of his powers, he sat down next to Valerie.

* * *

“I’m going to tear that stupid ghost apart, then put him back together so I can take him apart a second time!”

Danny stared at the ceiling, not bothering to respond as it was the one hundred and thirty-seventh time Valerie had said those words, or at least that’s how many times she’d said it since he’d decided that counting would at least give him something to do.

And Sam thought zoos were bad. At least they gave the animals something to do.

They also gave them food.

“Hey Frogger, you do realize humans need food and stuff to survive right?” Danny yelled, cutting over Valerie’s one hundred and thirty-eighth rendition of her threats. “Also, do the words animal enrichment mean anything to you?”

“Don’t call us animals,” she huffed.

“Technically humans are still a type of animal. And I’ll call us whatever I have to to get something to eat. I know you feel the same.” If Danny -- who could partially sustain himself on the zone’s ambient ectoplasm even while in human form and had just eaten when he’d been grabbed -- was hungry, then Valerie -- who was fully human and likely didn’t have a chance to grab something after school with her job -- had to be starving.

“I won’t give in to a ghost.”

“Meh, I prefer to show rebellion through stupid nicknames and punny taunts rather than by denying myself the basic necessities.”

“You’re being far too calm about this,” she huffed, moving to stand over him.

He shrugged. “Panicking never helps and I already did the anger thing before you woke up so I’m mostly just bored now.”

“So you’re content to spend the rest of your life here?”

“You say that like it will be a long time, which it won’t because Skulker doesn’t seem inclined to feed or water us.” When she met his joke with a glare, he sat up. “We’ve already established neither of us has the skills or equipment to pick the lock or bend the bars, so escape’s not happening. Skulker wants to keep us, which is very creepy, but at least means we aren’t going to die. So all we can do is wait out our rescue.”

“You think someone will rescue us?” Valerie asked, sitting next to him.

Danny pulled out his phone. “It’s been fifteen hours since we were grabbed. Skulker can be sneaky, but someone still might have seen him bringing us to the portal. And even if no one human saw us, invisibility doesn’t work in the zone. We were definitely seen and gossip is crazy in the zone. Doppelgänger will hear about this soon enough.”

“So?” she snorted. “We’re Red Huntress and a Fenton. Why would they help us?”

“The ghosts might not know that,” Danny said, thinking quickly. “All Doppelgänger would probably hear is that two humans from their territory got taken.”

“I guess that makes sense.” She laid down and Danny followed suit.

He stared up at the ceiling, then his lips twitched up. “Want to know what I’m really worried about?”

She hummed.

“Is getting kidnapped by a ghost a good enough excuse in Tetslaff’s book for not taking care of the baby?”

There was a beat of silence then she laughed. “Oh my god! She’ll probably make us redo it from the very start!”

“I mean, I left her with a responsible sitter. That should count for something.”

“Tucker, responsible?”

“I mean, he’s working with Sam. She’ll kick his butt if he goes off the rails.”

“That makes more sense.”

* * *

Valerie eyed the food the ghost had thrown into their cage suspiciously. Her stomach felt like it was eating itself, but…

“How do you even know it's safe?” she asked, looking over at Danny, who was halfway through his own Mighty Meaty Cheesy Melt.

“Like I said, he doesn’t want us dead, so it’s not poisoned. And there’s no ectoplasm in it. Even if there was, that whole _eat of the dead, become of the dead_ thing only applies to specific ghost fruits, which aren’t on here because he clearly stole it from the Nasty Burger and, again, no ectoplasm.”

“How do you know there’s no ectoplasm?”

“Ectoplasm has this strong citrusy taste that can’t be covered up with anything but mounds of relish, and there’s no relish on the burger.”

“Ho-How do you know that?”

“My parents aren’t as careful with pure ectoplasm as they probably should be.”

“That’s…”

“I know. Sam and Tucker refuse to eat over anymore unless it’s takeout and we bring it straight to my room. Really though, the food’s fine. Nothing weird in it, promise.”

“I don’t know if I can trust you to know what’s weird anymore,” Valerie said, but grabbed her burger anyways.

* * *

Val closed her eyes as she sunk further into the water. “I don’t know if I should be impressed or concerned that you literally annoyed a ghost into giving us a bathroom.”

“Grateful?” Danny suggested from the other side of the curtain that hid the toilet and bath from the rest of the cage. “It’s a gift, really.”

* * *

Danny snickered at Valerie’s glare.

“If I had my weapons…”

“Calm down, Val. They’re not doing any harm.”

“They won’t GET OFF!”

“They like you,” he chuckled and plucked off one of the blob ghosts.

He wasn’t sure how, but his usual swarm had found them and were now drifting about the cage. Some had attached themselves to the top like bats. Others had burrowed into their blanket nest. A few had made a home inside his jacket or atop his hair. A lot had decided Valerie was a very nice spot to sleep and had latched onto her.

The ghost in his hand vibrated, almost like it was purring except it sounded more musical.

“I’m going to smash them!”

* * *

“How does your phone even still have power?” Valerie asked as they watched Thor cut Thanos’s head off.

They were cuddled close in their nest of blankets with Valerie’s head on his shoulder so they could both see the small screen.

“Tucker upgraded it so it would run on ectoplasm for convenience’s sake.”

“Ectoplasm is convenient?” she chuckled, idly scratching one of the blobs curled up in her lap.

“It is in my house.”

* * *

Valerie gave the beast sitting on the other side of the cage a death glare.

“Yap!”

“You are so lucky I don’t have any weapons.”

Cujo rolled over onto his back and wagged his tail.

“Danny, make him leave with your annoying powers!”

The boy just reached over and rubbed the dog’s belly.

* * *

Valerie was tossing the rubber ball Skulker had given Danny -- and by _given,_ she meant the ghost had thrown it at his head after four hours of constant complaining of being bored -- for Blobert to fetch when a soft sound reached her, almost like someone was shushing someone else.

“Hello?”

There was quiet for a moment, then a blue-purple flash came from around the corner. A second later Doppelgänger poked their two heads out, smiling. “Valerie!”

“Yep. You here for the show or are you actually going to help us?”

They scowled and looked at each other. “Can’t we just leave her here? We’d never hear the end of it if we did. She’s the ghost hunter, let her figure her own way out.”

“I can hear you, you know.”

“We know,” they chirped.

Valerie sat up. “Listen here, you little -”

She cut off as she was reminded that Danny had been laying with his head on her stomach by a soft whine. She looked down to see him blinking up at her, his head now in her lap.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” he yawned.

“Ghost kid’s here. They’re arguing with themself about if they’re going to help us or not.”

Danny stared at her, processing, then sat up and glared at the ghost kid, who raised their hands with guilty smiles.

“We were only kidding.” They flew over to the cage and looked it over.

“It’s ghost and human-proof,” Danny told them.

“How’re we supposed to open it then? It’s got a manual lock. We need to stop living in the digital age for once. Shut up.”

“They’re always like this,” Valerie whispered to Danny as he chuckled at their antics. “I don’t know if it's a ghost thing or if they’re just messed up in the head.”

“We think aloud, jerk,” they snapped as one came forward and pulled a pair of bobby pins out.

Danny moved closer as they knelt next to the cage’s door. “You know how to pick a lock?”

They smiled at him and pushed up their goggles to give him a wink before they squinted down at the lock and started fiddling with it.

Valerie was surprised their eyes were yellow. She’d assumed they’d be green like their goggles.

“That’s a lot of blobs,” they said, the one not picking the lock looking over the cage.

“Just over three dozen and they all have names,” Danny said cheerfully.

“They’re just random pun names based around the word blob,” Valerie chuckled.

“Blobbington. Blobby. Blobin. Blo-”

“We get it,” the ghosts snorted, cutting Danny off.

It took a few moments, but then the ghost kid was floating back and the door swung open.

“Freedom!” Danny cheered as they left the cage. He turned to the blobs and made shooing motions. “Alright, you lot, back home with you.”

The swarm made sad ringing sounds, but flew off in various directions.

Meanwhile, the ghost kid that had picked the lock fixed their goggles back into place and put away the pins as the other passed Valerie her backpack and pointed at the wall across from them. “Go straight that way. We’ll meet you on the other side.”

“You want us to go through the wall.”

“Humans can be intangible in the ghost zone. Just try, you’ll see,” they said before heading back the way they came.

Danny walked up to the wall and stuck his arm through. “They’re right.”

“I guess that’s what Skulker meant by human proof,” she said as she followed him over and tried it for herself. “He must have done something to the cage so we wouldn’t slip right through.”

“Guess so. Ladies first?”

She rolled her eyes and stuck her head through to make sure no one was on the other side. They continued like that until they reached a wall that only had a void on the other side. She put on her suit and they jumped through. She summoned her board before they could fall too far, then looked around.

“We should leave now while we have the chance.”

“Great idea. Which way do you think the portal is?” Doppelgänger asked with a snort as they flew up.

She sent them a glare.

“Thanks for the help,” Danny said, setting his hand on her shoulder. “Can you show us the way out?”

They turned to her, crossing their arms.

She crossed her own arms and stared back.

“Can we please save this for after we’re far away from the ghost who locked us in a cage for eight days?”

“We’re not the ones who got locked up,” Doppelgänger reminded them.

“Maybe so, but you are the ones who are going to be stuck in a thermos for an hour if you don’t knock it off,” he said. “Can we just agree to a truce until we get out of here? Please?”

“Fine,” they said and one held out their hand.

Valerie shook it. “For now. Get us out of this ghost zone, and we'll see how long it lasts.”


	11. Episodes 18.6-19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valerie and Danny return home. Meanwhile, Vlad is up to trouble again.

**{Life Lessons, Part 3}**

The two ghosts led Valerie through the Ghost Zone in a weaving path. They were going at a pace slower than she was used to when dealing with them, but still fast enough that Danny had to hold on to keep from falling off.

“You okay?” she asked when his grip tightened during a turn.

“Yeah, just not used to it.”

“Maybe I should take you flying with me some time,” she said, glancing back at him and was pleased to see his smile.

“Sounds fun.”

The trip was thankfully short and soon enough Valerie was following the ghosts through a swirling vortex, coming out in the Fentons’ lab.

“Last stop, home,” Danny joked as he hopped down.

“What was that?”

All four teens froze at the voice before the ghosts darted through the walls and Valerie retracted her suit. A moment later, Danny’s parents came running down the stairs.

“Danny!” his mom shrieked when she saw them and the two adults swooped in to hug him. “We’ve been so worried! Are you okay? Did that awful ghost hurt you?”

“I’m-Mom, I’m-I’m okay! I-Dad, I can’t breath!”

The two pulled away and his mom held him at arm’s length to look him over. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, mom. Really.”

She didn’t look convinced, but turned to the other teen. “Valerie Gray, right? Are you okay?”

“Uh, yes ma’am,” she said, blinking. “Um, how did you know…”

“Your boss saw you and Danny get attacked and called it in,” Mrs. Fenton explained. “We tried to track it, but we found out this morning that it managed to get back to the zone somehow without using our portal. We were just preparing the speeder so we could come find you.”

“But you managed to escape on your own,” Mr. Fenton said, slapping Danny on the back hard enough that he stumbled forward. “That’s our boy!”

“The ghost didn’t hurt you?” Mrs. Fenton asked, looking Valerie over as she’d done Danny.

“No. He was some sort of collector or something. He just stuck us in a cage, like zoo animals,” Danny said.

“Well, I suppose that’s better than the alternative. I still want to be sure, though. Jack, why don’t you call Damon and the police and tell them the kids are back.”

“Yes, dear.” Mr. Fenton ruffled Danny’s hair then ran upstairs.

Mrs. Fenton checked them both thoroughly for injuries then grabbed what she referred to as a first aid kit, but turned out to be a large toolbox full of medical equipment. She used it to check their eyes, lungs, and heart before measuring any ectoplasmic radiation they were giving off.

“A 0.3er,” she read off after scanning Valerie. When she saw the girl’s curious expression, she explained, “Lower than I would have thought, which is good. It’s a completely healthy reading. It also means the atmospheric ecto-rad level of the Ghost Zone might be lower than we were expecting.” She then turned to Danny and scanned him. “A 1.18er.”

“Is that bad?” Valerie asked, worried.

Danny shook his head. “I run hotter than most. My whole family does, really, but I got into an accident a few months back so I run even hotter. That’s not much higher than my usual.”

“We don’t start worrying until a person’s ecto-rad level reaches 1.5er,” Mrs. Fenton added. “That’s when ectoplasm starts to negatively affect a human’s body.”

“Mom, Mr. Gray is here,” Danny’s sister said, poking her head in. Her eyes widened. “Danny!”

* * *

Danny gave a pleased sigh as he cuddled up between his partners.

“Sorry it took us so long to find you,” Sam said, squeezing him.

He kissed her cheek. “It’s not your fault. Besides, it was kind of fun tormenting Skulker. I think he was actually tempted to send us back towards the end there.”

“Only you would think annoying the crud out of the homicidal ghost keeping you prisoner was a good idea,” Tucker chuckled, nuzzling into his neck.

“That’s why you love me!” Danny nuzzled him back. “How did you guys find us?”

“Someone found video footage of Skulker going through that random portal on their CCTV camera and turned it over to the police,” Sam explained. “Jazz told us when they were bringing in your parents to see the video so we were able to come along invisibly.”

“Weird as it is, Jazz is probably the hero this time,” Tucker said. “She also got you and Val an A on your baby assignment.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah, she came by that night and told us you were missing, then took both sacks with her. Said something about giving us time to process.”

“Which was good because we were up all night trying to find you.”

“Then the next morning after she gave us ours back she went to Tetslaff and explained what had happened. We don’t know what she said, but she turned in the sack and when Tetslaff handed out grades, she said you’d get As for trusting someone so responsible and mature to babysit for you.”

“Wow, score one for teacher’s pet Jazz. Maybe we should bring her in on the secret.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Sam snorted.

“She’s even more overprotective of you than you are of anyone. She’d never leave us alone,” Tucker huffed.

Danny’s nose scrunched up as he remembered how Jazz had hovered over him for two months after his parents had accidentally left him at the Christmas tree lot when he was six. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair. I’ll have to do something nice for Jazz, though. So how’d you guys do on the baby thing anyways?”

Sam smirked. “Well, _I_ got an A.”

Tucker grumbled something and pressed further into Danny’s neck.

* * *

**{The Million Dollar Ghost}**

“Thanks for covering for me, Sam,” Danny said as he scrubbed ectoplasm off the lab’s floor. “There’s no way I’d have been able to get my chores done with all the extra work Lancer assigned me.”

_“It’s fine. As long as we cover the next poetry night.”_

“I will.”

_“Did we charge the bazooka already?”_

“Yes, Mom.”

_“Did we change the ecto-filtrator?”_

Danny paused then went to do just that.

_“We’d be lost without us,”_ Sam chuckled. _“Did we talk to our dad about showing up at school?”_

“Jazz and Mom were taking care of it when -”

_“GUYS!”_

“Tuck?”

_“Volume!”_

_“Did you hear?”_ Tucker said, thankfully quieter.

_“Hear what?”_

_“Turn on the tv! Amity news!”_

_“We’re on patrol,”_ Sam said as Danny went to the lab’s tv.

_“Switching to FaceTime.”_

_“-etent, non-Jack Fenton ghost hunters in Amity Park has never been more obvious,”_ the news anchor was saying while footage of his dad’s attack on Lancer played. It switched back to the anchor and she continued. _“Luckily a mysterious benefactor has offered a million-dollar bounty on the head of Amity Park’s most famous ghost and invited the world’s best-known ghost hunters to track her down.”_

Danny’s jaw dropped as a picture of Tucker in ghost form appeared onscreen. “What?”

_“Who on earth would place a bounty on us?”_

_“Besides Valerie, but we know she doesn’t have that kind of money,”_ Tucker added.

“Valerie wants to hunt us down herself, same for my parents,” Danny said. Then laughed. “Oh man, my dad is going to go crazy when he hears about this.”

_“Dude, this is serious.”_

_“Aren't we worried? These are the best-known ghost hunters in the world!”_

“Sam, they’re the _best-known,_ they’re not the best,” he scoffed. “Trust me, I grew up around these people so I have a pretty good idea who’s going to show up. It will be great.”

* * *

“We’ll admit, they don’t look threatening,” the trio said, watching the gathering of ghost hunters from atop a nearby building. “It’s actually kind of sad.”

“Tell me about it.” The trio flinched and turned to Valerie as she landed next to them.

“Hey. Hi. You here for the bounty?”

“Lucky for you, no.” She sat down on the edge next to them. “I don’t trust this bounty thing. I’m here for the same reason as you, the show. Danny said his dad would be here to show up the out-of-towners.”

The four watched as the Fenton parents ran over a pair of ATVs.

“And that’s only half the show.”

“What do you mean?”

“SAVE DOPPELGÄNGER!”

The four turned to see a horde of teenagers marching into the Nasty Burger parking lot, all waving signs saying things like, “Protect the ghost boy!”, “Freedom for the ghost girl!”, and even just their name or picture. Paulina and Dash were at the head of the charge with fierce looks on their faces.

“I found out the popular kids at my school were organizing a protest against the bounty.”

“Well, don’t we feel special.”

“Apparently Paulina and Dash, the most popular sophomores, both have crushes on you.”

“Yikes. Wow. We don’t know if we should be flattered or creeped out.”

“You’re dead. It’s creepy.”

“Rude. Do they think we’re a guy or a girl?”

“Dash is adamant you’re a girl. Probably to soothe his poor straight heart. Paulina thought you were a guy, but I think my friend Star said something to her after I let it slip you might be non-binary because she’s been using _they_ pronouns lately.”

“That’s… more forward-thinking than I assumed she could be. Given she’s the popular type.”

“She’s bi. As long as you weren’t femme, she would have been game.”

“Oh.”

“She’s still in the closet, so don’t say anything to anyone.”

“We won’t.”

Screams sounded over the arguing and the four looked back to the crowd to see a trio of bird ghosts dive-bombing the hunters.

“Those are Plasmius’s vultures. Should have known he was behind this whole thing.”

“Plasmius,” Valerie asked.

“A fruit loop of a ghost.”

“Let me guess, he hates you too?”

“Worse, he wants us as his kid. Tried to kill our dad and kidnapped our mom once.”

“Seriously?”

“Unfortunately. Do you mind taking care of this? The out-of-towners are idiots, but we’d rather not test the Fentons.”

She shrugged and climbed to her feet. They watched her drop down and start firing on the birds until a voice sounded behind them.

“Not going to lend your father a hand, Daniel?”

The trio turned to see Vlad floating behind them.

“Wow, you look even stupider than we sai-remember. You do realize the modern interpretation of vampires is a hot person, right?”

“I see you’ve been working on your duplication then,” he said with a scowl. “You do realize you don’t have to talk together, don’t you ?”

“You do realize there are better uses for your time than bothering a teenager, don’t you? Shouldn't you be getting home to the love of your life? Oh, that’s right! Our dad married the love of your life. We’re trying to watch the show, do you mind?”

Vlad scowled and fired on them.

“Should we really be teasing the older, stronger half-ghost? Well, we do outnumber him.”

Vlad split in three.

“Now we don’t.”

Sam raised a shield around her and Tucker while he grabbed onto the GAV’s controls and used it to fire on Vlad. Meanwhile, Danny put his speed to use diving around the three Vlad’s.

“You’ve gotten better,” one Vlad said as Danny curled around his blast, a bit of frustration leaking into his voice.

“And you’ve gotten worse,” they said.

Was it just Danny or were the Vlad’s slower and weaker than usual? Did duplication cut their power?

Interesting, and good to know for Sam.

A green blast flew by and Danny looked down to see they’d gotten the hunters’ attention.

Danny turned back to the Vlads and fired at the one closest to him. A pink blast joined his and the Vlad disappeared.

“Your stalker?” Valerie asked.

“Yup.”

“I believe that’s my cue to leave,” a Vlad said and they teleported away.

“And ours,” the trio said as a few more of the hunters’ blasts flew past them.

Valerie turned her blaster towards Danny, who raised his hands. “Thought you weren’t going for the bounty.”

“I’m not. This is for me.”

Sam and Tucker shot away as Danny flew down towards the crowd, distracting all the hunters and waving at their fans before he dove straight into the ground. He came up in an alley where his partners were waiting and all three transformed.

* * *

“I knew there was something sketchy about this mess,” Valerie said as she looked over her pistol. “I didn’t think a ghost would be the one placing the bounty though.”

“Ghost?” Danny said, coming back over with a now-empty thermos.

“Yeah, some enemy of the ghost kid. They said he wants them as his kid, but I don’t even know how that works for ghosts.”

“No clue. Maybe he’s just insane.”

“Probably.”

Valerie’s phone went off and she pulled it out. “There’s an attack downtown.”

He leaned in as she brought up a live feed.

A large, t-rex-looking ghost was stomping through the street. Sam and Tucker were already there, firing on its head. The hunters, Danny’s parents included, could be seen chasing them in the background.

“You going to join them?” Danny asked, pulling back and grabbing Valerie’s grenade launcher. His partners looked like they had it and they’d give him a call if they didn’t.

“And risk getting into another ghost discussion with those pathetic excuses for hunters? Pass.”

“You should see them at one of the conventions.”

The two worked in silence until Danny’s ghost sense went off and a device on the counter next to them started beeping.

“Ghost?” Danny grabbed it and checked it. “It shouldn’t be picking up the fight from here.”

Valerie loaded the cartridge back into her pistol while Danny grabbed the only other operational weapons on the table, the thermos and Fenton Ghost Gloves.

The vultures flew through the ceiling, then froze. “You should not be here.”

Valerie blasted all three in the face.

Danny grabbed one in one hand and sucked the second into the thermos with the other before they could recover. The third dodged around another blast from Valerie, only for the Jack o' Nine Tails to come shooting out of the stairs and wrap around it.

Jazz slammed it into the floor as she came into the lab. “You guys okay?”

“We’re fine,” Danny said, sucking the last two into the thermos. “You?”

“Fine. I was just heading into the kitchen to grab a snack and saw them flying by.” She watched as Danny went to empty the thermos, then turned to Valerie. “What are you guys doing down here?”

“Well now, isn’t this a surprise?”

The teens looked up to see Vlad hovering over the lab.

“Great, another uninvited guest,” Danny groaned.

The ghost turned to him in shock. “Daniel?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do I know you?”

Valerie shot Vlad before he could do anything else.

Jazz tried to grab him with the nine tails, but he caught it out of the air and yanked it away from her. Danny used the distraction to punch him in the back. He smirked down at the gauntlets when the older halfa was sent into the wall.

Valerie slid up to his side as Jazz grabbed the Fenton Foamer off a table and blasted Vlad. “Trade you.”

Knowing from personal -- bruising -- experience that Valerie was better at hand-to-hand, Danny passed her the gauntlets and took the pistol.

The kids didn’t give Vlad a chance to breathe, switching quickly between Valerie beating him into the ground and the Fentons shooting him out of the air. Soon enough, Danny was opening the portal so Valerie could toss him through.

“And don’t come back!” he yelled before shutting it. He turned and smiled at Valerie before meeting Jazz’s eyes. “Mom and Dad never hear of this?”

“Agreed.”


	12. Episode 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the season finale, Red Huntress and Doppelgänger team up to take on a ghostly circus.

**{Control Freaks}**

“Hey, we’re not here yet?” Danny and Tucker said as Danny flew up. “We paid us to cover for us at school. We’re going to the opening of that goth circus.”

Danny shook his head.

_Cross over to the dark side…_

The boys blinked as something settled over their link for a second before disappearing.

“What was that?”

Danny shivered and shook his head.

“Let’s just get to school.” They nodded and turned to fly off, only for their ghost senses to go off. They looked around and spotted a group of ghosts flying past with bags of money. “Those must be the ghosts we fought last night. Sounds right, come on.”

They took chase. Tucker blasted one of them and Danny darted down to catch the bag of money the ghost dropped before it could fall on the cop car chasing the ghosts. He set it in the car’s backseat and gave the police a wave before flying back up.

Suddenly their link went hazy again and Danny ran headfirst into Tucker as he froze in midair. 

“Are we okay?” Danny asked, then his eyes widened as he realized Tucker was quiet. “Hey?”

Tucker shook his head and turned to Danny as the haze disappeared.

“What? Are we okay? We froze up for a second there. Yeah, we think so. Where’d the ghosts go?”

Danny shrugged and pulled Tucker through the billboard he’d frozen in front of. He looked around, but didn’t see the ghosts anywhere.

“Gone. Come on.”

They only made it a block before the haze settled over them again.

“What is that? We don’t know. It’s not us. Then maybe…” Both their eyes widened. “We need to find us, quickly. The train yard.” Tucker pointed back the way they’d come and they flew back to see a crowd of goths facing off against a crowd of parents. The two looked over the crowd of goths until they spotted Sam near the center. “There!”

They dove into the ground and came up next to her, invisible.

“Are you okay?” they whispered, but she didn’t look at them. She just kept staring forward with red eyes.

“Her eyes. We know. We need to get her -”

“Make them see us for who we are,” Sam muttered, then a flicker of purple light started at her waist.

Their eyes widened and they grabbed her, turning her invisible and dragging her into the ground.

“What were you thinking?” the two hissed once they’d come up in the abandoned warehouse the crowds were outside of, creeped out by how she didn’t speak with them despite being in ghost form.

The haze lifted.

She shook her head after a second and looked around.

“What happened?” the trio said. “We nearly just transformed right in the middle of a group of people! What? We-we don’t know what came over us. Something’s messing with us. Let’s get to school. But the opening ceremony! Our parents are out there leading the charge. They’ll kill us if they see us. Alright, fine.”

Sam glanced longingly in the direction of the circus train, but followed her partners.

* * *

“What was up with you two this morning?” Danny asked as he sat down at their lunch table.

“Two?” Sam asked, looking up from her salad.

“Tucker froze up on me while we were chasing down those ghosts you fought last night. It felt just like when you went blank.”

Tucker shrugged. “I don’t know. I remember chasing the ghosts towards a billboard. They flew through it then… then Danny was talking to me.”

“What billboard?” Sam asked.

Danny shrugged and Tucker’s face screwed up. “… It had a guy on it, with a red staff… I think.”

Sam frowned and dug into her backpack. She pulled out the promotional flyer she had for Circus Gothica. It had the ringmaster on it. He was holding a red staff, but the top of it was out of frame. “Was this him?”

“Yeah, except… you could see the whole staff. There was…”

“A glass ball on the top.”

“I think so,” Tucker dug his phone out of his pocket.

Danny frowned. “So Tucker wigged out seeing a Circus Gothica poster and you wigged out at its opening ceremony. Think there can be a connection?”

_“I am Freakshow, ringmaster of the Circus Gothica…”_

Danny and Sam looked over as a voice came from Tucker’s phone and Danny scooted closer to see the screen.

_“… where your nightmares come alive.”_

“Is that the trailer?” Sam asked standing up to lean over the table, but couldn’t get an angle where he could see. “I think it came on this morning, but I was fighting with my parents so I think I missed it.”

_“Circus Gothica, where the clowns never smile.”_

They didn’t respond.

She looked at their faces to see both of their eyes glowing red.

_“Circus Gothica!”_

She yanked the phone out of Tucker’s hand. She closed the video without looking at it. “Danny! Tucker!”

They blinked and their eyes went to normal.

“I think it’s safe to say something’s wrong with the circus. I can’t believe my parents are right.”

Danny frowned. “But what’s going on? Is it some sort of anti-ghost thing?”

Tucker’s eyes widened. “Right before Sam transformed, she repeated the ringmaster’s words. Something about revealing yourself.”

Danny shivered as he went pale. “The ghosts, the ones who’d been stealing things, we chased them right to the circus’s train.”

“Ghosts don’t care about jewelry and money,” Tucker said, “but humans do.”

“Mind control,” Sam growled, snapping her spork in half. “That’s why the performers at Circus Gothica are said to be able to do unnatural performances. They’re literally supernatural!”

“Those poor ghosts. Who knows how long they’ve been under his control. We have to help them,” Danny said.

“Preferably before they steal anything else,” Tucker hummed. “One problem though, how?” The two turned to him and he gestured to his phone. “We can’t even look at a picture or video of the guy before becoming mindless zombies. How are we supposed to fight him?”

The three frowned down at their lunches.

* * *

Valerie looked up from her homework as she heard a knock on her window. “Hey Valerie, we’ve got a problem!”

“You bet you do?” She grabbed her pistol and pulled open her curtains. She frowned as she took Doppelgänger in. “Why’s that one blindfolded?”

All three of the ghost kid were fidgety. One had their goggles pushed onto their head so a black scarf could be wrapped over their eyes. The second was arm in arm with the first, likely to lead them around. The third looked like they were trying to strangle the paper in their hands.

“Preventative measure,” the three said. “It’s what we need to talk to you about. Can we come in? Please? It’s about the robberies.”

She crossed her arms. “You can’t come in, but I’m listening.”

The one with the paper held it up so she could see. “Have you heard about this?”

“Circus… Gothica? Maybe. My friend said he was going to some circus and that one sounds up his goth partner’s alley. Why?”

“The ringmaster is controlling ghosts and forcing them to steal for him.”

She gave them a blank stare. “You’re kidding.”

They shook their heads and the one with the paper pointed at the rod the man on it was holding. “We think it’s his staff. We can look at this just fine, but seeing anything that shows the thing in full makes our brains shut down.”

“Then why aren’t you off stealing stuff?” she asked, before something clicked in her head and she looked at the blindfolded one. “Preventative measures.”

“We can snap ourselves out of it.”

“As long as you aren’t all hit.”

A horn honked and the three flinched.

She sighed. “Get in here.”

They dove through her wall. The two without a blindfold went to close her laptop and turn off her tv. “All clear.”

The third removed their blindfold and Valerie was surprised by the neon purple color of their eyes. She could have sworn their eyes were yellow.

“We can’t go after the circus,” they said before she could comment on it. “We can barely go after the ghosts without risking falling under the same spell. Heck, with all the billboards that have been popping up out of nowhere, we can barely fly around town without risking it.”

“So what, you want me to go in and beat the guy up?” she asked.

They shook their heads. “It might have been a ghostly crime, but he’s a human criminal. We can leave it to the police. We just need to make sure he can’t use the ghosts to get away.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?”

The three smiled and one held up a ticket.

* * *

Valerie scowled as she slumped into her seat. “This is stupid.”

“Everything is stupid,” the guy next to her moaned.

Valerie scooted away from him. “I feel ridiculous,” she whispered this time.

_“You look great. You still sound a little too peppy though.”_

She had half a mind to take out the wireless headphones Doppelgänger had given her and chuck them as far as she could, but she fought it down.

She was currently dressed in her most gothic attire: a torn Dumpty Humpty band tee that she’d been meaning to get rid of, a black leather jacket, black skinny jeans, the black choker necklace Danny had given her for her birthday (minus the topaz sun pendant), and a pair of her dad’s black work boots. Doppelgänger had also done her makeup, giving her dark smoky eyes and blood-red lips that matched the streaks of temporary dye in her hair, which had been left messy and in her face. The final piece had been a skull mask that covered the top half of her face.

Altogether, she blended in perfectly with the crowd of Circus Gothica patrons.

“Leave it to a ghost to think goth looks good.”

_“Just because you can’t pull it off, doesn’t mean it’s a bad look.”_

“I thought you said I look great.”

_“You do. She doesn’t. We’re having a difference of opinion. Can we just focus on the task at hand, please?”_

Valerie grunted and leaned back. She watched the contortionist twist herself in ways that might have been freaky, had she not known the woman was a ghost and seen other ghosts do way worse.

Doppelgänger had split themself at the neck once.

Her eyes caught on the side of the tent as a dark figure slipped out. She smirked and twisted herself to drop down through the hole in the bleachers. “He’s on the move.”

_“Alright, be careful. And remember, you’re goth. You need to act like a fan, but you still have to be disinterested in existence and everything that comes with it.”_

“How does that make any sense?”

_“It doesn’t. Yes, it does. Just play it cool. You’ll do fine.”_

Valerie slipped into the off-limits area and looked around. The area was actually pretty empty. There were a few devices -- that… well, she hoped they only _looked_ like torture devices -- off to the side, but otherwise the room was empty.

“What are you doing back here?”

Valerie turned to see Freakshow walking in from another room.

She put on her best Sam expression. “Wicked, you’re Freakshow. I was wondering if I could get an autograph. You’ve got to be the sickest thing that’s happened to this garbage dump of a town.”

_“Goth’s don’t sound like that. Stop backseat spying.”_

“Yes, well, I am quite spectacular,” he said, adjusting his jacket.

_“Oh god, he’s_ that _kind of performer. And here we’d thought he was cool. Except for the mind control. Right, except for the mind control.”_

“I suppose one autograph couldn’t hurt. What’s your name?”

“Scarlett. Could you sign my-Woah!” She faked a trip and crashed into his left side, putting enough force into it to take them both to the ground. The staff clattered off to the side.

“You daft girl.”

Valerie didn’t bother to keep up the charade. She rolled towards the staff, scooping it up and climbing to her feet in one smooth motion. Then she was out the tent’s back entrance.

“Wha-Get her! Don’t let her get away.”

Valerie smirked and dove around a set of crates just as a strongman and short ghost came flying out.

“I’m clear. The ghosts are all yours.”

Almost immediately one of the trio was slamming down on the strongman and blasting the short ghost. Valerie kept moving as the other two joined in. As much as she’d like to take down the ghosts, she needed to get the staff as far away as possible. She hit the button on her watch and her suit wrapped around her. With a click of her heels, she was shooting into the sky.

However, she’d barely made it to the first highrise before a swirl of tiny green creatures swarmed her. 

“Give it up girl,” Freakshow said as a cloaked ghost flew up with him in her arms. “Return to me what you stole and -”

“Just shut up,” she said, using her hoverboard’s guns to fire on the small ghosts.

“Destroy her!”

Valerie readied for a fight, but then something landed in front of her and a green dome wrapped around them. Doppelgänger drew in the shield, then sent it exploding outwards to wipe out the smaller ghosts and knock back the larger one and her passenger.

Another of the ghost kid sucked up the ghost then plucked the ringmaster out of the air.

“We’ll bring this back to the circus,” the two said before the second flew off.

“You alright?” the one on her board asked.

“Fine.” She tightened her grip on the staff and looked over her shoulder.

After a moment, the ghost kid sighed. “I think that was the last of them.”

“Good.” She faced forward as they turned to her. “I had that under control, you know.”

They didn’t respond.

“Hello.” She waved her hand in front of their face. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” they answered, but their voice sounded off. Smaller, not as echoey.

She stepped back and looked them over. Her eyes landed on their face and she realized they weren’t looking at her.

They were looking at the staff.

Hesitantly, she shifted the staff into one hand then pulled their goggles up to see red irises, just like the ghost had described.

“You… You’re under my control?”

“I’m under your control.”

Her grip tightened on the staff. This was… She could do _anything_ to the ghost kid. Could finally get her revenge. She could question them and find out anything she wanted. She could learn all their weaknesses. The only thing she really couldn’t do was destroy them, as there were two more of them out there.

She stepped closer to the ghost, grabbed them by the front of their suit. She looked them in the eyes, and froze.

She couldn’t do it. She should, but she couldn’t. Because she looked into their eyes, and saw Danny.

She could say she didn’t know why, but that would be a lie.

Even though Danny helped her with her weapons and let her rant to him whenever the ghost kid annoyed her, she knew he -- like most of the rest of the school -- thought the ghost was good. She didn’t get it, especially with his parents, but she also wasn’t blind. She saw his little frowns when she talked about how the ghost was a menace and noticed when he tried to keep the topic off them whenever he could. She was actually grateful he was willing to stay neutral for her, lord knows Star couldn’t.

So she knew Danny wouldn’t be pleased with her if she did this, but that wasn’t the only reason the ghost’s eyes reminded her of Danny. As much as she hated the ghost, she could recognize that they had a lot in common with her friend. Most of the time. Really only when it was one of their usual fights, just her and one of them, when they would bob and weave around her attacks with ease.

During those times, they were witty and could come up with the most ridiculous pun-filled taunts. It was something Danny liked to do, but only around people he was close to or during that one time with Skulker. They both made every situation seem so much brighter, made everything seem easier to handle, though she’d never admitted it in the ghost’s favor. And sometimes the ghost would get a resigned edge to their voice while they were fighting her that sounded so much like when Danny had to play mediator between her and his partners.

It was something she pushed aside, ever since it had hit her during her stay in the ghost zone, but now.

Now all she could see was Danny!

She growled and shoved the ghost away.

They staggered back off the hoverboard, but their flight took over before they could fall and they stayed level with her.

She looked down at the staff, glaring, then held it out. “I’m going to regret this.”

She let go.

She kept her eyes on the ghost as the seconds passed and a crash sounded far below.

They blinked and flickers of red energy came off their eyes, but their eyes remained the same.

No, they didn’t. Their eyes remained red, but the color became warmer, less like blood and more like fire. They were a brighter color with hints of orange. It felt softer, more compassionate.

It made their eyes look even more like Danny’s.

“Red?”

Valerie turned and flew off.

* * *

She hesitated, then knocked on the window in front of her.

After a minute, the curtain was pulled aside and Danny stared up at her with wide eyes. He opened the window and stepped back. “Val? What are you doing here?”

She carefully flew inside then recalled her board and suit. “Sorry, I just… can we talk?”

He nodded and sat down on his bed, gesturing to the space next to him. “Are you okay? You’ve been acting weird this past week. Is it about that clown guy that got arrested for using ghosts to rob places?”

“Something like that,” she sighed. She sat down and placed her elbow on her knees so she could hide her face in her hands. “He had this staff, it could control ghosts. Doppelgänger asked for my help to get rid of it so the guy could be arrested without the ghosts interfering.”

“Alright, did something go wrong?”

“Not exactly. The plan worked perfectly until… One of the ghost kid’s duplicates came to help me when a ghost chased me. After the ghost was taken care of, they turned to me and… and I had the staff so…” She waved her hand.

“They got mind-controlled,” Danny finished. They were quiet for a moment then he asked, “What did you do to them?”

There was no judgment in his voice -- not like what would have been in Star’s if Valerie had told her, not that she knew Valerie was Red Huntress. Instead, he sounded curious.

She picked her head up and leaned against him, staring blankly at his bedroom wall. “Nothing.”

“Really?” he said, unsurprised.

“I could have, a part of me wanted to, still wants to, but I didn’t. I couldn’t, not really. They were right there, completely helpless and I just didn’t do anything.”

“Of course you didn’t.” She looked up at him to see him smiling down at her. “Val, you’re not that kind of person.”

She sat up with a frown. “What do you mean?”

“Like you said, they were helpless. You wouldn’t take advantage of a situation like that. It’s not you. They probably knew that. Why else would they have risked bringing you in?”

Valerie couldn’t bring herself to say anything because Danny was wrong. She would have done it. If it had been any other ghost, if their eyes had been covered, she would have done it.

“This isn’t what I came here to talk about,” she said.

He frowned, but allowed the change in topic. “What’s up?”

Valerie took his hand and met his gaze. “Everything that’s happened lately made me realize I… I like you, Danny. I really like you, a lot.”

Danny blushed. “I…”

“I don’t know if you feel the same, but if you do or even if you’d just like to give us a try, maybe we could go on a date this weekend?”

Danny smiled and opened his mouth, then snapped it closed and looked down at his lap. “I-I can’t.”

“I under-”

“No, Val, I… I want to. I really _really_ want to. I like you too.”

“Then -”

“But I _can’t._ I…” He pulled his hand away and his fists clenched and he bit his lip. “There’s something you don’t know, and it wouldn’t be fair to you to keep it from you if we were together.”

“Then tell me.”

“I can’t. I want to, but it’s not just my secret to keep.” He rubbed at his eyes.

She nodded and stood up. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry. I… I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I-I should go.” She went to the window. “I’ll see… Bye.”

“Wait.” She turned to him as he went to his desk and pulled something out of a drawer. “I’ve been meaning to give this to you, but haven’t gotten the chance. You should probably take it now. I know you’re mad so I don’t know whe-”

“I’m not mad.” She wasn’t. She trusted Danny to keep her secret, so she couldn’t be mad that he’d keep someone else’s. She was just…

She took the device. It looked like a belt. She wrapped it around her waist and clicked it closed. With a beep, it hummed to life.

“It’s called a Specter Deflector. It repels ghosts and protects you from a lot of their powers.”

She gave him a smile that felt fake. “Thanks.” She tried to pat his shoulder, but he flinched away so she backed off. “Bye, Danny.”

“Later.”

She summoned her suit and slipped out the window.

* * *

Sam carded her fingers through Danny’s hair and shared a look with Tucker. The three were piled up on an abandoned building with some dinner, though the food had mostly gone untouched.

“Sorry, dude, we know you’ve had a thing for her for a while,” Tucker said.

“Haven’t.”

“You have, and it’s only gotten worse since you guys got back from Skulker’s.”

Danny pressed his face into Sam’s thigh.

“I still don’t get why you turned her down,” Sam said.

“If I dated her, then she found out we were Doppelgänger, it would ruin everything. And I couldn’t tell her. If I only told her about me, then that would be as bad as lying because I’d have to cover up everything about our connection with each other. And I couldn’t tell her about you guys.”

“You could,” Tucker said and Sam fought down her reaction to that. “We won’t make you keep this from her.”

He shook his head. “You guys still don’t trust her. I know you don’t so don’t try to lie. And I… I still don’t know how she will react anyways. It would be selfish of me to put you guys in danger just for a chance.”

“You deserve to be selfish sometimes,” Sam said, turning him to face her. “We want you to be happy.”

“I know.” He sighed and sat up. “I just… sometimes I wish I was Amity Park’s one and only halfa.”

His partners pulled him into a hug.

“You don’t mean that,” Tucker said.

Danny looked up at him. “I do. If I was, then you wouldn’t be in danger and it would just be my secret to tell, not yours.”

“Oh, Danny,” Sam whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the season comes to a close. There might be an extra week between this chapter and the next because I need to figure out how I want to go about posting season 2 since it isn't complete like season 1 was when I started posting it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ghosts of Another Christmas](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25937470) by [AuthorLoremIpsum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorLoremIpsum/pseuds/AuthorLoremIpsum)




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